canyonwalker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
canyonwalker) wrote2025-05-10 11:00 am
canyonwalker) wrote2025-05-10 11:00 am
Entry tags:
- ai,
- it,
- sales,
- social trends
Is AI Coming for Your Job?
At my sales training seminar the past few days I had a number of conversations with colleagues about AI. These convos spanned topics from "What are we doing [in our product] to align with industry demand for AI powered features?" to "How can we use AI in our jobs in sales to sell more effectively?"to "Is our job [in sales] even going to exist in 5 years?" There's so much I could write about AI even within these topics, let alone the broader discussions about AI. For this, my first journal entry about AI, I'll start with the latter question— which, to state it in more dire terms, is, Is AI coming for my job?
I use this alarmist language to make a point: This is what people are worry about more and more. And this is the type of lanaguage that's becoming increasingly common as people express their thoughts/concerns.
I don't think the future is as bad as all that. I think we're at a point in the technology hype curve where there's a lot of uncertainty. And I want to be careful to say that I really can't predict the future of AI, even 5 years out.
Why 5 years? Consider how far AI has come in 5 years. 5 years ago AI was more science fiction than science fact.
Three years ago AI was full of hype but still short of reality. While many people in software development, my field, were buzzing about how AI would give us "10x" improvements and pouring money into it, a few of us were pointing out that there was currently no there there and such investment was like the proverbial lemmings chasing each other over the cliff.
Two years ago in software development we started to see the actual value of AI appear. AI could write code— but generally simple code, and it needed more testing and definitely review by a skilled person. The new wisdom became, "AI makes programmers 30% more efficient." That's a far cry from the 1000% gain people were still frothing about 12 months earlier!
Today, in software, we're seeing that 30% level of gain take hold more broadly. Some people react to that figure by asking "Does that mean layoffs of 30% among software developers?" I think that viewpoint fails to appreciate what's happened across the history of technological progress.
Yes, new technology has always reduced the number of old jobs that were doing things the old way. In the industrial revolution factory automation reduced the number of jobs for everything from sawing wood to stitching clothes to digging for coal. A simplistic view of it is, "Machines replaced people." But while machines replaced jobs where people were doing rote, manual work, the economy was not a zero-sum game. Overall the economy grew because of efficiency, and new, higher value jobs were created elsewhere.
The same lesson applies with the AI transformation. AI will replace people who are doing lower level, more rote jobs. But economic gains will mean more higher level jobs can be created elsewhere. For those who are looking at it as zero-sum, though, and wondering, "Will AI take my job?" the answer is really, "People who know how to use AI to be more productive will replace those who don't."
I use this alarmist language to make a point: This is what people are worry about more and more. And this is the type of lanaguage that's becoming increasingly common as people express their thoughts/concerns.
I don't think the future is as bad as all that. I think we're at a point in the technology hype curve where there's a lot of uncertainty. And I want to be careful to say that I really can't predict the future of AI, even 5 years out.
Why 5 years? Consider how far AI has come in 5 years. 5 years ago AI was more science fiction than science fact.
Three years ago AI was full of hype but still short of reality. While many people in software development, my field, were buzzing about how AI would give us "10x" improvements and pouring money into it, a few of us were pointing out that there was currently no there there and such investment was like the proverbial lemmings chasing each other over the cliff.
Two years ago in software development we started to see the actual value of AI appear. AI could write code— but generally simple code, and it needed more testing and definitely review by a skilled person. The new wisdom became, "AI makes programmers 30% more efficient." That's a far cry from the 1000% gain people were still frothing about 12 months earlier!
Today, in software, we're seeing that 30% level of gain take hold more broadly. Some people react to that figure by asking "Does that mean layoffs of 30% among software developers?" I think that viewpoint fails to appreciate what's happened across the history of technological progress.
Yes, new technology has always reduced the number of old jobs that were doing things the old way. In the industrial revolution factory automation reduced the number of jobs for everything from sawing wood to stitching clothes to digging for coal. A simplistic view of it is, "Machines replaced people." But while machines replaced jobs where people were doing rote, manual work, the economy was not a zero-sum game. Overall the economy grew because of efficiency, and new, higher value jobs were created elsewhere.
The same lesson applies with the AI transformation. AI will replace people who are doing lower level, more rote jobs. But economic gains will mean more higher level jobs can be created elsewhere. For those who are looking at it as zero-sum, though, and wondering, "Will AI take my job?" the answer is really, "People who know how to use AI to be more productive will replace those who don't."