In my university classes, my students joked that I could soon be replaced. And they have a point. With content carefully selected by the academic director, it would be possible to automatically generate an entertaining, concise podcast and even hold conversations with my personalised alter ego. And it would always be available (24/7), helpful and in a good mood… and in multiple languages! I hope they don’t find out about this.
Various examples to confirm the hypothesis
Sakana AI is a Japanese company that has managed to generate a scientific article without human intervention, which passed a blind peer review in April and was presented at an international workshop. This is a first step towards allowing scientists to devote themselves to thinking and reducing the pressure to meet their annual quota of publications in high-impact journals.
Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott said that 95% of the code generated in 2030 will be written by AI. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, says that they currently generate more than 30%. What will companies that need programmers or STEM professionals look like?
You may have read the following news item, although I am including it here (sorry, my generative AI suggested I do so when writing this article): In a recent Danish study, economists Humlum and Vestergaard took a close look at the impact of chatbots on professions that were expected to be swept away by artificial intelligence: accountants, journalists, teachers, lawyers… However, the data tells a different story. Neither salaries nor hours worked have changed, not even by a modest one per cent. Technology is advancing, yes, but reality is dawning slowly, barely stirring (for the moment). Perhaps the real change is more subtle and less predictable than we imagine from a distance.
Kuang-Hsien Wang and Wen-Cheng Lu have also published this other study, this time in Taiwan with 3,682 full-time workers nationwide: they were asked about the risks of feeling displaced by AI. This study reveals that those who perceive the greatest risk are mainly women, older people, those with a high level of education, frequent Internet users and remote workers. Artificial intelligence is a concern for those who run factories and service companies; executives view the future with suspicion. Interestingly, newcomers to the world of work fear less for their jobs: they see the threat as more distant than their elders. Also, for the time being, AI is more of a companion than a replacement, and the dreaded wave of unemployment remains, for now, just a rumour in the corridors of companies.
A recent article published by MIT confirms this hypothesis. They say that because AI is based on a universal approach, it performs poorly when data is small or biased, machine learning is insufficient, or ethical dilemmas exist. In these scenarios, the machine performs poorly and corresponds to tasks that are better performed (or complemented) by humans. These are intensive jobs that would be associated with the categories encompassed by the acronym EPOCH: Empathy, Presence, Opinion, Creativity, Hope. They give examples of professions that are not at risk of being replaced: emergency managers, psychologists, childcare workers, public relations specialists and film directors. They say they do not deliberately call them ‘soft skills’ because they are not really soft, they are complex and difficult to teach.
Conclusions
The time has come to sit down and reflect for a moment before the steamroller hits us. What lies ahead for our profession? What will be our next rebirth and transformation in the workplace? How will we reconcile AI? It is not enough to be an expert in prompt engineering and Zero Coding. We don’t just have to sign up for leadership and communication courses. We don’t just have to complete fifty courses on the latest impactful technologies. In my case, the road ahead is still long, and I hope to be available (God willing) until almost 2040. May these lines be of value, and best of all, may the questions be of value in helping us pave the way forward. A little like Machado.
