Inc. Magazine
AI is raising concerns as many believe it could reduce jobs and change how we work. Roles like cashiers and factory workers seem most at risk, while jobs needing creativity like teaching and music feel safer. Experts say AI can help, but it’s human skills that still make the difference.
Survey: Why Non-Tech Workers Don’t Trust AI—and Fear for Their Jobs
Author: Kit Eaton
One of the bizarre things about AI tech, which many people worry could upend the entire job market, is that you can ask it if your particular job is at risk. It’s not a crystal ball—AI is using all its clever algorithmic math to answer this query, but the fact that it can pull this feat off is why this emerging tech is causing greater concern than, say, the arrival of the smartphone, or even the office PC revolution in the 1980s. A new Pew Research survey examined the general public’s concerns about AI, and shed light on exactly what people are worried about. Pew also quizzed AI experts too. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they feel differently than people outside the field.
Pew’s data show that U.S. adults are far less likely to think positively about AI than experts: only 17 percent think it’ll benefit the U.S. “somewhat” positively over the next 20 years—56 percent of experts think it will. If you ask experts if AI will “harm” them in some way, just 15 percent agree, while 43 percent of the public think AI will be a source of harm. This negative view of AI skews more toward female respondents too: 22 percent of men in the survey think AI will be a positive force in America, versus just 12 percent of women.
What is one of the big sources of worry, and a way AI could “harm” someone—given that for now, it’s effectively just flickering lights on a computer screen, rather than some robot that could go rogue?
Jobs, of course. General worries center on how AI could totally change how people work, radically overhaul the kind of expertise and training new job seekers will need, and even outright replace puny human workers. Pew’s data show that just 23 percent of U.S. adults surveyed think AI will have a “very” or “somewhat” positive impact on how people work in the next 20 years. The negative impact people expect from AI is clear: 64 percent of the public thinks AI will actually lead to fewer jobs.
Meanwhile 73 percent of AI experts think AI will have a positive impact on work, and only 39 percent think AI will steal jobs, perhaps pointing to a broadening education gap between what experts know about AI and what the average person thinks they know.
Pew’s report does have one really interesting section—-and it may impact your company if you work in a particular sector. That’s because AI experts and the public alike identified certain types of job as being more replaceable with AI than others. About 3 in 4 experts and general public members think jobs like being a cashier in a store are at risk. About half of these two groups, meanwhile, think the same is true fot journalists, software engineers, and factory workers. Fewer than half think AI will threaten musicians, teachers, and physicians.
One area where experts and the public disagree is for jobs like truck driving, where 62 percent of experts say there’ll be fewer human roles in the next 20 years compared to 33 percent of the public. This last point taps into the development of innovative self-driving systems—breakthroughs that have frequently gotten bad press, possibly explaining the difference of opinion.
In broad strokes, Pew’s data supports other, anecdotal news from experts as well as opinions and plans from policymakers about the impact of AI. Teachers warn that AI use is already making students think for themselves less, which may impact future job markets. The United Nations recently warned that AI could impact 4 in 10 jobs worldwide. And a report about AI’s impact on the manufacturing industry, a bastion of manual blue-collar work, may indicate we all actually need to think about how AI will change all our workplaces. That’s a conclusion that will impact your company too, from hiring decisions right down to which AI tools you use.
Meanwhile, your writer actually asked ChatGPT if his job was at risk from tech like the chatbot itself.
It reassured me that no, I was going to be OK. “I get why you might be concerned,” it said, but it thinks that, from what it knows about me, I have a “unique edge.”
It then delivered a line that some xAI experts, presumably like those in Pew’s survey, have previously shared: “AI can assist with some tasks, but it can’t replicate your personal insights, creativity, or the nuanced understanding you bring” to the job. “Think of AI as a tool to enhance what you do rather than replace it,” it said. But then it added “you’ve got the human edge—use me to sharpen it,” which is a smart bit of writing. Interesting.
Credits: TCA, LLC.