Why Won’t Smart Machines Take Over Your Job?
Do you believe that in the future, when AI becomes more powerful than it is now, only high-IQ people’s jobs will remain, while the rest will be unemployed or unemployable?
I stumbled upon this question on an AI and ML-related subreddit and wrote up some thoughts I’d like to share. I can’t know for certain which jobs AI will take over for good and which ones it won’t, as I don’t know whether that would be good or bad, but one thing I do know: it doesn’t relate to how smart you are. Here’s my answer:
If you have a ‘pretty high IQ’ and, for any reason (experience, age, financial independence, layoff from your previous job…), are currently unemployed. In that case, it is objectively quite hard for you, when compared to people with lower IQ, to find a job if you are interested in being employed for whatever reason (money, socialization, whatever). This is an opinion, but I didn’t make it up, and there’s quite some literature and social media slop, and even Medium articles, if we play a bit with the search keywords that work better for this kind of platform, considering this platform is not particularly characterized by “low IQ” users.
It is harder for you, a high-IQ person, to find a job, likely because people in the “workforce” (professionals employed by corporations) tend to prioritize climbing up the corporate ladder over enabling someone else to climb it up. This is a quite logical and intuitive behavioral tendency that makes sense for the vast majority of people in the workforce, except for some niche exceptions in today’s context (competitive sports where age forces you to be a coach/manager, highly vocational and traditional jobs, such as handicrafts, where money is not a decisive factor, etc.). If you are climbing the ladder and part of your job involves recruiting other people to climb it with you, you’ll likely choose ones that won’t potentially overtake you or, worse, push you out of it.
Of course, many various factors influence how this ‘corporate ladder’ thing works, not just IQ. But the question was about machine intelligence and its potential impact on the workforce. IQ-related or related to any other factor, this happens at every level of the ladder and in pretty much any business, except for the named exceptions I mentioned before. This is a subjective opinion based on empirical observations over approximately 20 years in the workforce. As an opinion, it’s questionable, and I’m pretty sure many people would read what I just wrote and dismiss it as a stupid thing to say. But I’m also pretty sure some people would relate and agree. I neither claim to be stupid nor intelligent, as I’m not the one to judge, but I’d likely label people who relate to this opinion as ‘high IQ,’ as opposed to those who would dismiss it as stupid or didn’t care to read it because ‘it’s a long text.’
Having said that, if people with high IQ are generally less likely to be employed than people with low IQ, how on earth would ‘the system’ (made up of people with average intelligence) be willing to let ‘intelligent’ machines do most of the work, ‘intelligent’ people do the remainder, and all the rest sit tight at the foot of the ladder while others climb it? I don’t think it works like that. People who press the on/off buttons on machines that can do human jobs are not smarter than average and won’t be willing to let a smart machine push them off the ladder, just as they wouldn’t let a smart person do it.