AI Jobs Apocalypse? (fusion event)

This is a hybrid event, if you can't be there in person, please join us on Teams here: https://teams.live.com/meet/9378312297248?p=5lVo2bcZRuAwIp8h

The leap in the effectiveness of AI performing of human tasking has been dramatic in the last several years, with ChatGPT and other language models sometimes performing complex tasks spectacularly well. Several of our members have seen layoffs at their organizations as a result.

So are we facing an AI jobs apocalypse?

Here are several references that say yes.

This one says 8 million jobs in the UK are at risk, mostly low paying and entry level jobs: AI ‘apocalypse’ could take away almost 8m jobs in UK, says report | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian

This one says 70% of all jobs are AI affected (not all will be lost) Report Warns AI Could Cause "Jobs Apocalypse" (futurism.com)

And this one projects 15-20% jobs lost: How to Best Prepare for the AI Jobs Apocalypse | Nasdaq

While this one projects that the most educated and high end jobs are most at risk, and that unless we somehow politically take the AI profits form the AI moguls, then most of us will be on a subsistence dole, and will all suffer the psychological effects of uselessness either way. The Future of Work in the AI Era by Eric Posner - Project Syndicate (project-syndicate.org)

There are counterpoint views. These two articles note how with every prior technology improvement, there was fear of jobs losses. But employment actually rose in most affected industries. And then new industries also appeared. As a demonstration of tech jobs creation, 60% of jobs today did not even exist as types of work in 1940. Why AI will not lead to technological unemployment | World Economic Forum (weforum.org) People are worried that AI will take everyone’s jobs. We’ve been here before. | MIT Technology Review

This one takes a mixed view. It notes that 300 million jobs are threatened worldwide, but that more jobs will eventually be created than are destroyed. AI Could Eliminate 300 Million Jobs, Warns Goldman Sachs | The Epoch Times

And this one says that total job losses are overstated, because the estimates neglect the cost of creating and training the AI, and that actual losses at least in the near term will be only about 1/4 of the doomsday estimates. New Research May Calm Some of the AI Job-loss Clamor-For Now - MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy

While this one takes a very long term view and says that in the end almost all of our jobs will be lost. The Impact of Artificial Intelligence - Widespread Job Losses (iotforall.com)

This collection of views is all over the place on the AI jobs apocalypse.

I offer several questions for discussion:

1. In past tech development, repetitive actions and strength-based tasks were automated, leading to more "head" focused tasks in the new jobs. With the Language model AIs being able to do creative "head" tasks, is the rosy picture of new and better "head" tasks replacing drudgery tasking no longer true? Does AI break the prior tech pattern?

2. Prior job replacements were mostly infrastructure intensive. This created jobs to build the new infrastructure, and maintain it. however, is AI software development so specialized to not be able to employ many, and then so easily replicated that there is no infrastructure needed anyway? Does AI break the prior patterns because there is so little need for infrastructure to implement it?