Artificial Intelligence (AI): Helpful or Harmful to Jobs?

Posted byVanya Wryter ConsultingPosted inBusiness, Education, Jobs and Tech, Lifestyle, Work Skills, Writing and EditingTags:, , , , , , , ,

Is artificial intelligence (AI) harmful or helpful to our jobs? Will we lose our jobs to AI? Many already have faced the answers to those questions. People have lost work to AI and certain jobs will disappear completely. On the upside, AI has enhanced our work by eliminating our repetitive tasks. AI can also reduce the time it takes to complete tasks. Most importantly, AI will create new jobs. Let’s dive into this topic further.

Will AI replace jobs?

At first, artificial intelligence (AI) was helping us to do jobs better and faster by completing repetitive tasks. Having someone (or something) complete all the boring tasks is a good time saver. But AI will continue to improve to the point of replacing jobs and people. Here are some examples. 

In customer service, bots answer frequently asked questions (FAQs) from customers, so staff are free to answer infrequent or more complex questions. Robot waiters can take dishes and drinks to customer’s tables. AI can use existing examples of writing and art to create stories and artwork similar to an existing style.

Can AI help us to do our jobs better?

AI is already helping us to do our jobs better and faster. It can help us to find errors in our writing. It can also learn from our writing style and remind us to use a spelling or word specific to our company or industry.

It can act as a personal assistant to schedule meetings with clients and coworkers. It can generate automatic email responses so that customers will receive generated, immediate responses to their messages. Chatbots can handle frequently asked questions and common issues, handle inquiries and decide when a more complex situation needs to be passed to a human support agent.

How can we foolproof ourselves from losing jobs to AI?

AI will replace jobs in the future. It has already replaced jobs. If AI hasn’t replaced your job, chances are, your job will be affected by AI in some way, such as automating part of your job or changing the way you do your job.

Jobs that AI won’t replace are those that require human interaction. For example, although AI can be used to teach in the classroom, it cannot replace the trust and close relationships that teachers have with their students. Teachers can intervene if there are arguments between students or help a student who is having personal issues at home. 

AI cannot listen to a person’s problems and help a person through a mental health crisis. Similarly, it does not have the sensitivity to deal with a sudden job layoff, or answer a question about health benefit coverage that will have a severe impact on a person’s family.

Why is AI beneficial for society?

AI helps us to complete repetitive tasks more efficiently, freeing us to do other things. Instead of marking the same test a hundred times, AI can score all the tests in a matter of minutes, saving a human one to several hours of boring work.

AI can also help people to improve their skills. For example, it can suggest ways for bad writers to improve their writing by identifying their spelling mistakes and suggesting better ways to write their sentences. This is not the same as replacing professional writers. People who need to write reports or emails at work aren’t going to invest in a professional writer to write an internal report. But they will appreciate having something to check their grammar before the report goes to their supervisor.

Similarly, people will value a robot vacuum cleaner, pool cleaner, or pet food dispenser to help with chores around the house. One day, a robot may even be able to do all the basic housecleaning that people dislike. 

However, technology cannot replace all tasks, especially those that require special skills. People who can afford it will want to hire writers to produce a piece of writing exactly to their specifications. People with expensive heirlooms or valuables will want the human touch to do the job right when they need a thorough cleaning of their homes.

Key Takeaways

As with any advancement in technology, jobs will disappear and jobs will be created. Jobs that require a human element will be the hardest for AI to replace. But AI will also provide us with many benefits, such as replacing boring and time-consuming tasks. Jobs will also be created that are related to the creation and maintenance of AI. 

What do you think? How has AI affected your work?

68 thoughts on “Artificial Intelligence (AI): Helpful or Harmful to Jobs?”

  3. Yes, I think it’s going to be both “good” and “bad.” I’ve been talking a lot about this topic on my blog http://www.depepi.com Also, because of my upcoming book which aims to help those affected to create resumes that will pass the ATS that some companies have to decide which pass through and which are discarded. I do believe that we’re going to see a bit of a mess until we get a balanced job market where we see more enhancements than cuts.

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      1. Despite AI headwinds humans are the only solution for every problem because AI doesn’t carry creativity, ability to take decisions as per situation. So AI will not take over humans that’s for sure.

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  8. This is a great take on AI, I always think of it as a move towards leisure time, the more we are able to integrate it the less medial and mundane tasks we as humans have to complete, and the more time we can spend on priorities within our work that ai can’t touch.

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      1. Job, by type, I have references about the risky 100 jobs and augmented 100 jobs in the ongoing 10 years. Nearly all jobs of services will be competed whereas all medical and technology jobs will be improved

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      3. Yes, really i designed and developed many AI based apps some of them were implemented and others are now in their way to competitions. I’m designing in all fields of sciences and medicine

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      3. Yes, there’s always a price for any sort of advancement, we’ve seen it throughout history. So it makes sense that technological advancement would be the same way.

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  16. Interestingly, even though I agree with you that AI cannot replace sympathy or empathy from a human being, AI is being used (or planned for use) in therapy. You can literally have an interaction with it along the lines of,
    You: “I’m feeling down.”
    AI “I’m sorry to hear that. Sometimes people report feeling better after going for a walk. Have you walked for at least 20 minutes today?”
    And in addition, as a teacher, I know that there are some teachers who prefer the most automated tests and activities for students, but I do not. Yes, multiple choice bubbles can be graded faster, but they can also be gamed faster. Student understanding, i.e. learning, is not always fast. So…even if it does have its uses, I am skeptical of AI and think we should do MUCH more thinking about what will happen when and if it’s used. To give a personal example, I dated a guy who always used the replies that his phone supplied when texting with me. He could take care of our conversations with one click. We went our separate ways, for that and other reasons, but that AI intervention in our interactions was the beginning of the end.

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    1. Yes, I read an article about that the other day. The limitation is that even with generative AI, it can only show empathy based on past situations it has been exposed to. With completely new situations, it may not come up with the best or appropriate answer.
      The tests we use are for enterprise level companies that mass hire for 50+ entry level jobs at a time. The amount of human hours required to sort through thousands of job applications and resumes and then conduct interviews for hundreds of applicants for the same job is time consuming. They also miss the opportunity to hire someone who is qualified but terrible at interviews. AI is able to evaluate open-ended responses to hundreds of skills tests in a matter of minutes to find the right applicant for these jobs.
      Thanks for your thoughtful comments!

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    1. AI will take jobs from humans, but new jobs will also be created for humans. People who are anxious about social interactions appreciate interacting with a computer (such as self checkout) but not all people want to interact with a robot. For example, a trauma survivor in therapy may not want to speak with a robot. In Japan they have a rent a family industry. Jobs will also be created to develop and maintain AI products and technology.

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      2. It is, but as robots become more common, people will want services from humans (such as that rent a family service for people who live alone). Another comforting fact is that as companies such as the one I work for become more successful with our AI, we continue to hire more employees to improve the technology. We don’t worry that our AI will become so efficient that we will lose our jobs to our own creation.

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    2. And that is not the only bad aspect. Let’s say we are in a really bad situation, say, we committed a crime in self-defense, our friends deserted us or live in a different country and aren’t aware, and we need moral support when we are finally released from prison. We are given the number to call for a social worker – but it’s actually being done in the “most efficient” “best” way, i.e. by a bot, so that we receive canned, meaningless responses when we need the comfort of another human being. Someone in an office somewhere is congratulating himself for having saved his psycho-social support company money, and getting a big promotion, while the poor person trying to get a little help received nothing but its imitation. It’s disgusting to me that people are embracing this type of thing. No one should be treated as though their concerns were not worthy of the time of another human being.

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    1. What do you mean by catfished? Are you looking for fiction using ChatGPT? Otherwise, wouldn’t people search for online fiction using the websites of those selling fiction? If there is fiction available on websites, then, yes, ChatGPT could copy or create a story based on the fiction that it finds on websites.

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      2. I once read this story written by ChatGPT. The writing was pristine and the grammar was perfect. It was a story about someone who had immigrated to another country. The problem was the plot was very generic. The details were also the average of many immigrant experiences. You feel like you’ve read a similar story before. That’s the problem with the AI. It can’t craft a unique story, and that is the difference.

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      3. I recognize that it’s a philosophical question for now, but the time is coming when AI may be able to imitate a human writer in a way we can’t spot. For now I tend to search out like minded writers on WordPress based on comment responses, and I have been very happy with what I’ve found. However, there is a lot of talk about users who are only in it for likes and followers, and AI can certainly be used to mine for those—that’s just basic advertising. At what point do we lose the soul of writing?

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      4. Yes, I found a few bot writers myself and unfollowed. I fully support the progression of AI but I also think that writers will continue to be successful regardless. My favorite novelists have been authors who aren’t world famous because they write well. I’ve also read novels by world famous writers who don’t write well. Point is, writers will develop a following regardless of technology.

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      6. If you are concerned about being catfished by AI, I would recommend keeping on top of developments in AI. As a reader, that will help you determine if you’re possibly reading the work of AI or a human. As a writer, being informed will keep you ahead of the game since you will know what makes a human writer stand out from AI.

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  19. Excellent post . Artificial intelligence (AI) has certainly brought about significant changes to the job landscape. but the key is to embrace its potential while focusing on uniquely human aspects of your job. Thanks for sharing.

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    2. what is hard for me to understand is why people would prefer to find new ideas about cooking tricks from what is called “AI.” AI is just picking up info from human sources and agglomerating it, using huge amounts of energy in doing so. Why not just find info from another human, say another blogger, and then thank them and give them the credit. AI cannot really think of things on its own, so am not sure why we would ever refer to it as smart, or credit it with successfully helping us, when we have a climate crisis caused by so much energy overuse. Not to mention the breakdown of human relationships bc people are preferring convenience to making the effort to interact with live humans.

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