Key takeaways
- Back when the big push to go paperless started, people thought we would completely eliminate paper usage in the office and at home. But paper is still very present in our lives and will be for a long time to come.
- Today, people fear that artificial intelligence, AI, will take over everything, including most jobs. But that won’t happen.
- New AI technology has made huge gains with programs like the virtual baby, Baby X, and the service agent, Ava, who fields a majority of customer service calls at Autodesk.
- AI probably will eliminate some jobs—likely those routine jobs that require no human compassion to do them well.
- Past technologies and advances we’ve dealt with eliminated jobs too, but then new jobs popped up to fill in the gap. It will probably be the same with AI.
Remember when everyone started going paperless? It kind of makes me laugh because it seems like we have even more paper now than we did before. But, that’s not really true because we do a lot on our smartphones and tablet devices and we typically don’t print off of those. We’re all doing much more of our work digitally than before. Even with these changes, paper is still with us and probably will be for a long time to come.
Like using paper, there’s something else that gets a bad reputation: AI, artificial intelligence. People fear it’s going to take everything over, but that’s not going to happen. Still, it’s important to understand where it might displace jobs and the people who do them. I have three areas to talk to you about regarding AI and its potential impact on our lives.
Baby X, Ava, and the Future of AI
Let’s start with Baby X. This Baby X is a virtual baby and she’s a project of Dr. Mark Sagar, founder of Soul Machines. Dr. Sagar has been training her, over time, to respond to certain stimuli. He’s programmed her brain with the hormone oxytocin. Oxytocin is known as the happy hormone. The more of it your brain releases, the happier you are. She smiles and laughs in response to certain playful things he does with her. In addition to happiness, he also teaches her to respond to scary things with fear. For instance, he taught her to respond to spiders with fear. It’s truly fascinating.
Researchers are making big gains in creating a virtual person that has more natural human qualities. That way it feels like you’re interacting with a real person. Speaking of that, Ava is employed, virtually, by Autodesk. She has taken over the role of virtual agent, fielding 70% of all tier one and tier two customer service calls.
It’s definitely interesting. And, it’s better than when you call an 800 number for customer service and end up talking to someone overseas. That can make it very difficult to get a satisfactory solution to the problem you called about. Innovations like Ava improve on that aspect and maybe it will get even better moving forward.
Finally, let’s discuss the future of AI. The biggest concern people seem to have is that AI will eliminate many or most jobs. To alleviate that concern, I have this graphic to share with you. Dr. Kai Fu Lee presented this to us at the recent Abundance 360 conference. You can see that across the top you have Human Compassion and across the bottom, No Human Compassion.
Then on the left side are routine jobs and on the right side more complex jobs.
As you study this, you see that the lower left quadrant consists of routine jobs that don’t require human compassion. This might be a factory line worker or court recorder. On the lower right side, you still have no human compassion, but the jobs have more complexity to them—maybe an actuary or a scientist.
Moving up the left side to the upper left quadrant, you still have routine jobs, but these require human compassion. Caregivers, counselors, and similar professions might fall into this category. In the upper right quadrant, you have complex jobs and human compassion. Examples include a coach and a CEO.
Think about the jobs in the lower left quadrant, those routine professions with no human compassion involved, getting eliminated by AI. What would happen? It frees those workers up to seek jobs in the upper left quadrant—those jobs with human compassion involved. It could result in more job satisfaction and fulfillment for those people.
And, whenever new industries emerge, it typically creates fresh new jobs for people to fill. In fact, there’s a new position on the scene in the AI sector: conversational scripter. Someone has to teach Ava and Baby X and others how to speak like a human. There are countless other jobs coming up too. It will be interesting to watch where all this goes. Just like other things we’ve dealt with, such as the dotcoms of the ‘90s, etc., jobs were eliminated, but new jobs opened up in their place. Keep an eye out for what will go on in the future. Until next time, enjoy.
Gary