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Chapter Six is called "White-Collar Jobs will Disappear, Too." He begins with a 2017 article about an earnings report for Smuckers' jam.
I wasn't sure why I was reading it, but afterwards comes the reveal: "Notice anything off about the piece?" (I didn't.) "As it turns out, the article was written by AI."
We think of automation, he writes, as displacing blue-collar workers. But the important distinction is routine v. nonroutine. Doctors, lawyers, accountants, wealth advisors, journalists, and ever psychologists will be threatened.
"Some of those threatened workers, like investment advisors, may find themselves surprised to be on the chopping block" after supporting these technologies.
The Federal Reserve categorizes 62 million jobs as routine--44 percent of jobs. It calls the disappearance of these middle-skill jobs "job polarization," meaning we'll be left with low-end service jobs, high-end cognitive jobs, and little in between.
The finance industry, he writes, is ripe for automation. By 2020, global assets under management of robo-advisers are set to reach $8.1 trillion.
An AI platform called Kensho now writes detailed reports on global events and company data. A report that would once have required 40 hours to write (by someone paid $250,000/pa) can now be done in minutes.
The insurance industry is ripe for automation. McKinsey predicts a 25% decrease in employment in the industry by 2025. Likewise accountants and bookkeepers. Deloitte predicts 39 percent of the legal sector will be automated in next ten years.
Going to law school is no longer a safe career move.
Human attorneys have a 60 percent precision rate when they reviewing boxes of legal documents. AI software is closer to 85 percent, and faster than any lawyer.
Human attorneys have a 60 percent precision rate when they reviewing boxes of legal documents. AI software is closer to 85 percent, and faster than any lawyer.
And about 80 percent of medicine can be done by AI. Radiology, pathology, and dermatology are toast. Robot surgery is at hand; AI will analyze thousands of surgeries. Robot super-surgeons are coming.
He thinks I'll be surprised to learn that humans won't have an advantage over AI in producing music. (To the contrary: it would obviously be easy to churn out contemporary pop music.)
The DoD has already produced an AI therapist to treat PTSD. The soldiers prefer her to a human one.
"If you think your job is safe," he concludes, you're probably wrong.
End of chapter.
"If you think your job is safe," he concludes, you're probably wrong.
End of chapter.
