Silicon Valley, the tech hub of the United States, has led generations of technological innovations and brought thousands of jobs and hundreds of businesses to the San Francisco Bay area since the 1970s. Now, many of these jobs are in danger of being deleted with the growing popularity of AI. Starting the new year off with a bang, hundreds of employees were cut from major tech companies, including Google, Amazon, and Duolingo, and at least one industry giant admitted the reason was to focus more on incorporating artificial intelligence.
Cutting Jobs to Focus on AI
Google laid off employees from its engineering department, including those working on Google Assistant, a voice-operated virtual assistant. Other areas where cuts were made include the hardware division, which makes Fitbit watches and Pixel phones. Most of these jobs affected “a team working on augmented reality, technology that combines the real world with a digital overlay,” the company told The New York Times.
Duolingo, a language learning app, cropped 10% of its contract employees so that it can rely more on AI for content generation.
(Photo by Andrej Sokolow/picture alliance via Getty Images)
It’s a bit ironic that the industry known for vast technological advances is now laying off employees so it can rely more on artificial intelligence. Those who helped to create the software and hardware for these innovations may find themselves replaced by, at least in part, the inventions they helped create.
Maybe it’s not too surprising that AI is gradually taking over more roles and duties in big tech companies. However, this technology is encroaching on our everyday lives, too. How much longer before artificial intelligence will replace your job?
Artificial Intelligence Replacing Jobs
“The widespread adoption of artificial intelligence has promised to create new jobs and make workers more productive, but these changes have come with a cost,” Built In said on its website. “Since 2000, automation systems have slowly phased out many manufacturing jobs – 1.7 million of them – and white-collar jobs are now also at risk of being automated into obsolescence.”
In fact, by 2025, AI is expected to replace 85 million jobs worldwide, according to the World Economic Forum’s The Future of Jobs Report 2020.
Is this true or hyped-up sensationalism? That depends on who's talking. Many industry insiders argue that media outlets are blowing everything out of proportion. Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, told BBC, “In many ways, they’re [AI] quite stupid.” And OpenAI founder Sam Altman said current AI tools are “wildly overhyped.”
Still, many experts predict that in the next five to ten years, a lot of professions will be completely automated. Here are a few jobs that might be replaced by artificial intelligence:
Computer Programmer
This may seem like an oxymoron. Don’t we still need programmers to work on AI? Well, with tools such as ChatGPT, which can write code, entry-level programming jobs may be on the shortlist.
Customer Service Representative
Chatbots and virtual assistants already have a foothold in this profession, handling customer questions. Think of websites that have chat assistants to answer your queries, which can be extremely frustrating if they can’t get you the information you need and there aren’t any humans available to guide you. Self-checkout is also another example, as some retailers make customers do their own checking and bagging.
Factory and Warehouse Workers
This has been going on for a while as businesses look for cheaper and faster ways of getting the work done. Already, AI powers a lot of machines in factories, with more speed and consistency than humans.
Car and Truck Drivers
Uber and Lyft, move over. Johnny Robot may soon be taking over. Autonomous vehicles are becoming more popular, especially in the rideshare industries. Uber has already partnered with self-driving companies, such as Aurora and Waymo, to give customers more options.
Financial Trader
Would you rather trust your financial portfolio with a human or artificial intelligence? AI reportedly can analyze markets much faster than humans and is able to predict market trends more accurately.
Still, some experts claim that involving AI more in our lives will actually create more jobs. Chris Nicholson, CEO of Skymind.AI, a machine learning company, told Built In:
“Everybody uses this analogy, but when the Industrial Revolution came, a certain kind of job disappeared. But many jobs, and many [new] jobs, were created. So when you think about, say, England before and after the Industrial Revolution, it wasn’t a poorer place where there was less work. There was a lot more work, but it was a different kind of work.”
Still, for those who aren’t too sure about giving artificial intelligence such control of their lives, watching jobs disappear can be a frightening prospect.
