A case of mistaken identity occurred a few years ago. A man was angrily shouting at me, complaining about the quality of his service and making unreasonable demands. After patiently listening for about 20 minutes, I finally told him that our customer service department would be able to help him with his (unreasonable) demands. At this point, he paused abruptly and suddenly realized who he was talking to. He then started apologizing profusely and his attitude change 180°. He became unusually polite and courteous. To this day, this experience still has a profound impact on me.
Jobs in society typically can be divided into two categories: maintenance and innovation. Maintenance-related jobs include administrative work, customer service, janitorial duties, plumbing, electrical work, and factory work. Blue collared jobs, mostly. Innovation-related jobs nowadays include data science, engineering, architecture, artificial intelligence/machine learning, nuclear physics, CRISPR gene editing, and entrepreneurship.
Due to a variety of factors, including education, the world has learned to value innovation and de-value maintenance, unless that maintenance becomes personal (occupations that lawyers and doctors hold, for example). We look down on blue collared workers and highly respect scientists and company CEOs.
The truth is, we need a balance of both. Maintenance is what keeps the world from falling apart, while innovation pushes boundaries at a (significant) cost. It is often the maintenance crew that cleans up our messes so we can keep going, and yet we are the ones that take all the credit.
The world can often survive without innovation, but it cannot survive without maintenance. But, when was the last time we really got to know the janitor that cleans up after our messes? Do we know their names? Do we know anything about their family? What their hopes and dreams are? Their stories? If they leave the job tomorrow and a new janitor comes in, would we even notice? Would we care? What makes some people more significant than others in our society? It’s not their kindness, it’s not their smile, it’s their status. We are so focused on production and security and the status quo that we forget to be human. Inclusion only goes so far.
The experience I had above was an eye-opener. Due to a variety of factors, I have never found myself in a job under a maintenance category before. I have always taken the innovation route. As a result, besides that experience, I can’t recall a time when I have been treated badly, talked to harshly, or looked down on by customers. I’m used to the respect that comes with my titles and achievements. That experience gave me a glimpse into how unfairly people in the maintenance category are treated. It made me angry, and over the years, I’ve tried to subtly hint at people who treat me well that my status should not be the reason for them to treat me better. This went nowhere. What’s needed is either a fundamental transformation of cultural values, or bringing people up in status. This is where automation comes in.
When artificial intelligence (AI) came into my world a number of years ago, I reacted to it quite differently than others. For one thing, I faced it with skepticism. As advanced as machine learning (ML) has gotten, I doubt its ability to replicate the amygdala and make judgmental calls that are non-data and rule based. I also doubt its ability to replicate learning-by-association methods that the brain utilizes. AI, on many fronts, uses vastly different models than the human brain. Brain cells’ abilities to function on their own and connect to other brain cells without a central system is something technology still cannot replicate. The possibility of AI to ever achieve human consciousness and emotional intelligence is something I am highly skeptical of. Having said that, one thing that I don’t doubt is AI’s ability to automate manual and tedious tasks, even tasks that require high customization are now within the reach of ML. When our research group writes Python codes to automate the image recognition of brain cells in mice to detect certain patterns, we are often pleased by the months of work machine learning can cut down, and yet weary of the effects of the margins of error that comes with it. What many experts are starting to see is a shift in the job market where AI is replacing a multitude of these manual and tedious jobs across many parts of the world. This is obviously not happening as quickly as media is hyping it up to be, but it’s heading in that direction (personally, I think the media is making AI sound far more advanced than it actually is, but that’s the case for pretty much every technology out there).
What this means is that the first people to be out of a job are people in the maintenance category. Personally, I think that’s a good thing. This pushes people to get more education and end up in the innovation category, where more jobs are likely going to be created to fill the voids that are created by the shift. In the innovation category, these people will likely find more job satisfaction, meaning and purpose, and respect from others. Of course, this is trivializing the picture, and many factors need to be taken into consideration here, including financial situations, family support, etc. Government and society need to take part in supporting people to gain more education and move up in status in society.
I support automation and AI job replacement, not because I’m an evil engineer, but because it forces people that are at the bottom of the society to move upwards for survival reasons. It also gives their lives more meaning. After all, if your work can be replaced by a robot, then it might as well be replaced by a robot, so that you can spend your life happier and doing more meaningful things.
