AI will Give our Jobs

By Ian Stephen

A lot of people ask: Will AI take my job in the future?

The better question is: Do I have a job now?

You might find that a strange question: But do you have a job?

What do I mean by ‘you’ doing the job? I do not mean your body; I mean the spirit living in you. No AI can replace that.

If you do work, and do all your work by following procedures; then you are not doing your job-the procedure is-the procedure is information in a book-you are information in your head. If the procedure jumps out of the book-sits in your head and uses you to do the job-then you are not doing the job-you are just a vehicle for the procedure to do its job.

AI is a different vehicle the procedure can use-and if it is a better vehicle, then you are redundant.

If the procedure does not do your job. If you treat the procedure as a guideline and actually use your own intelligence to complete the work-then you are doing your job.

Your spirit is mixed with the results-you are impossible to replace.

But You have to actually do the job; if you don’t want to be replaced.

AI cannot replace you, it can replace your body.

And it will if your body is a mere vehicle for procedure.

It’s amazing to compare a newspaper from the ’70s with a newspaper today.

Then, a degree was irrelevant to becoming a journalist-you were hired because you had good sense, because were possessed with eloquence perception and logic.

Your spirit was in the article: You used your own rationality to analyse events and comment on claims.

Today is a very different picture: There is no human spirit in most journalism: There is only procedure. University can’t teach you to be a journalist. You are or you aren’t. University can teach a journalistic procedure.

And most articles are procedural:

One:

Event-probably taken from Reuters.

Two:

An ‘expert’s’ opinion-no discernment or comment on the part of the author as to its quality.

Three:

Some event that was similar.

This pattern is everywhere-it is a procedure.

There is no sense of personality, no human spirit.

So, I ask you-did the journalist write this, or did the procedure?

Was the spirit of the author behind its creation, or did it take a back seat and let the procedure drive the body?

Can you see how easily an AI could replace the journalist’s body as the tool of procedure?

But how difficult an AI would find it to replace a person’s spirit-someone who puts themselves into their work?

This is easy to illustrate with journalism, but it is basically true everywhere.

If you can’t do your job better than a procedure-if you think procedures are there to be followed, and not just advice-then it is not you losing the job.

You never had it.

Your body is being replaced by a more efficient tool.

What will work look like soon?

You can see it for yourself by playing with image synthesisers. People argue that AI cannot create art, and they are right. AI can create technically well-made images, but alone they are without meaning.

If used by an artist, however, the program can be used to produce art. That is because a person with vision and purpose has used it to fulfil their goals.

This will be the truth of all fields soon. An engineer designing a system won’t need to know how a one-way valve works, they’ll only need to know what it does.

An engineer working with AI could use it to create all the components in the system-of this an Ai is capable. But arranging them in a useful and meaningful manner is the work of man.

Imagine you are at a dentist’s. The dentist has a drill-bot which can automatically fix holes in your teeth. The human dentist is still required to discern whether this is necessary-as, on a first inspection it may be impossible to tell a chocolate stain from a hole in the tooth.

AI will never be able to reliably tell which is which. There will always be the need for the dentist to give the spot a quick scratch with his fingernail.

It’s that kind of dynamic human input which will still be required everywhere-basically: Good sense.

Good sense is something you learn through experience, there is no standardised program to teach it.

This means higher education is about to change dramatically. Most of what is taught at university is procedural knowledge. The knowledge you get in a textbook is structured in a logical, procedural way. Basically, if something can be described in a textbook, it can be done by AI.

The only professional education which makes sense in such a world is apprenticeships. Following existing experts around to pick up their thought processes.

Universities, as such, will become irrelevant for professional education.

This will fix our university system-though in a rather apocalyptic way.

Today most people go to university. And most people at university are dead-eyed doops there to ‘get a job’. To learn procedural knowledge.

If everything procedural is done by AI, they’ll all be gone.

University can go back to a place for people who care about knowledge.

Yes, it will mean that 90% of universities disappear-but these are really vocational colleges in drag.

University is a place to attain ‘university’-a knowledge of all things. You go because you are curious-not to find employment.

As shocking as all this sounds, it is basically good news.

Any job done by procedure is done badly.

Procedural workers are annoying. They’re slow, bad at solving problems, asking men if they are pregnant and so on.

Soon, no one will be like that.

They will either get replaced by computer, or have to start bringing their brains to work.

Anyone who stares at you dumbly when there is a problem they don’t know the protocol for will be fired. People who use their own minds to fix things will be fine.

Think of the splendid quality we will soon see!

AI isn’t here to take our jobs.

It’s here to give them to us.