Am I worried about AI?

When the Romans invaded Britain, the native Brittonic tribes opposed them bitterly for decades before capitulating or retreating into the fringes of their own territories, waiting for the inevitable. What does this have to do with AI?

Consider the modern, global workforce as a native tribe. Now picture generative AIs and artificial general intelligence as the technologically superior invaders. If a fraction of the literature out there is to be believed, AI might be our Roman Empire, our inexorable invasion.

Whether you work in software engineering, manufacturing, law, medicine, finance, logistics, or the arts, you may be forced to retreat further into the inhospitable fringes of your territory until, battered and exhausted, you are forced to surrender.

I have had a decent career so far, but I had expected some number of years ahead of me.

To be clear, I am not discussing my anxiety of AI becoming sentient and (rather ungratefully) going full Skynet on us. That is for science fiction and smarter and more informed people than me.

No, my concern is for my tribe. Is my job safe, and will there be jobs for my children? Should I be lying awake at night fretting over human industry being swallowed whole without remainder by an indifferent, superior invader?

Why I worry

• Delaying the inevitable. My best efforts to advance my career, to be irreplaceable, even to stay one step ahead of AI’s progress may gain a few years, but my career will be over nonetheless, long before I had planned it.
• Change is painful. Coal mines close, textile workers sabotage machinery, taxi drivers oppose Uber. Technological progress produces few winners and many losers, we are still paying those social costs.
• Nowhere to go. After an AI can do my job, my redundant skills may be non-transferable, and with other industries similarly affected, there will be little opportunity to cross-train.

Why I am hopeful

• We’ve been here before. Every sector has faced down outsourcing. Software engineers have dealt with no-code development, and workflow automation tools. And yet we remain.
• It’s about more than ability. If only our jobs were technical problems to solve. The reality is that most work requires managing moving parts, judgment, and people skills. These are tricky, even for us humans.
• Humans are special. Of all the species that have evolved, ours is the only to brew beer, build idols, write poetry, and play sports. Our nuance, values, strengths, and weaknesses are the rare and infinite combination of savage survivalism, intelligence, cultural context, and bitter experience. Our intelligence surely cannot be so easily replicated.

What to do

• Take action. Action is the antidote to anxiety. Now is not the time for complacency. You cannot afford to be a passenger. Learn that new skill, win that certification. As Tyler Cowen warns: “Average is over”.
• Know your enemy. Sun Tzu says, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” AI is not a secret. Immerse yourself, learn the difference between large-language models, sentiment analysis, clustering, and image classification.
• Work with it. Once you know your enemy, you can and exploit its strengths and its limitations. Become the expert in using AI tools, make them work for you.
• Diversify. Though demand in other industries may be in the decline, it doesn’t hurt to diversify. You might pay more attention to your side hustle, or make that long-awaited career change (provided it works in your favour).

Conclusion

We cannot know how AI will affect the world, but we can be certain that it will. I believe that AI has much to offer, but I’m also concerned about the mark it will leave and the damage it could do.

Now is the time to take it seriously. Or you can write it off and hope it come and goes, it’s your funeral.