The idea that technology is reshaping the labor market is not a recent development.
For instance, assembly lines and manufacturing floors now function almost exclusively with robots and automation. According to experts, it has also had a variety of consequences on the workplace, including job displacement, change, enhancement, or creation.
Experts predicted that artificial intelligence, a young and rapidly developing field of technology, would follow suit. But it’s likely that such technology will focus on a different group of American workers than in the past.
According to Rakesh Kochhar, a senior researcher at the independent Pew Research Center and an expert on employment trends, “AI is distinct from past technologies that have come over the last 100+ years.” It is spreading from factory floors to offices, which are often occupied by white-collar, higher-paid workers.
Will it be a tsunami or a slow-moving force? That’s unclear, Kochhar continued.
In essence, AI is designed to emulate human cognition, or to think in human ways. According to Kochhar, it enables machines and computers to carry out activities on their own.
After making its public debut in November 2022, ChatGPT, an AI chatbot created by San Francisco-based OpenAI, went viral and sparked a heated controversy across the country as millions of users used it to compose essays, music lyrics, and computer code.
Unlike robots, which often carry out physical activities like lifting or moving goods, this technology does not.
Kochhar discovered that 19% of U.S. workers have employment with high AI exposure in a recent Pew research. The term “exposure” is used in the study since it is not yet clear if AI will have a beneficial or detrimental influence.
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Which workers win and which lose in front of AI?
Harry Holzer, a professor at Georgetown University and a former head economist for the federal Labor Department, referred to the Industrial Revolution.
According to a recent article by Holzer, “to yet, these anxieties have been generally unfounded — but not entirely.
Holzer, the author of the book “Shifting Paradigms” about the digital economy published in 2022, continued by saying that technology frequently creates as many employments as it eliminates over time.
Some employees become more productive thanks to technology. Because of the decreased costs and prices for goods and services, people “feel richer” and spend more, which encourages the development of new jobs, according to the speaker.
According to Gene Kindberg-Hanlon, an economist of the World Bank, new technologies have a negative short-term effect on net jobs in developed countries like the U.S., resulting in a 2-percentage point decline in overall employment. He discovered that after four years, the impact changes to a “modestly positive” state.
Some employees “lose out,” nevertheless, according to Holzer. Those who are directly replaced by machines and then driven to compete by technology make up a big portion of that group.
Since the 1980s, Holzer claimed, “digital automation has added to labor market inequality, as many production and clerical workers have seen their jobs disappear or their wages decline.”
He claimed that business owners frequently come out on top since they typically enjoy higher profits and require fewer labor.
According to him, the “new automation” of the future, which includes AI, has the potential to “cause much more worker displacement and inequality than older generations of automation,” potentially displacing millions of truck drivers, retail employees, professionals in the legal, accounting, and financial fields, as well as those in the medical field.
According to Holzer, it will also bring up new difficulties and demands such as the need for retraining or reskilling, which may in turn lead to the need for childcare for underprivileged workers.
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