Econ 01 | The Future of Work: Will AI Take My Job?

The word ‘job’ can have strong emotional connotations. Apart from the idea of putting bread on the table, it is tied up with our sense of oneself, our place in society and indeed our purpose in life. With the rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence, the question whether you’ll be replaced by AI is getting hotter and hotter.

Let’s look at this question from first principles. The very first principles - what separates man from other animals. Unlike other animals, humans have the ability to learn, and using language, impart such learning to others, and especially the next generation. 

The other fundamental difference is that we modify nature to suit our needs and wants. We take materials in our environment and reshape them in innovative ways - we create tools. The process of doing this is indeed the widest definition of the word ‘technology’. Thus,

And technology is necessarily a divergence from what is natural. But this is one type of divergence from nature that we, usually and mostly, consider a good thing. It is even the very reason we have survived as a species - life in the African savannah was too dangerous for us to fend for ourselves without recourse to tools.

Let’s take a closer look at what a tool is. A tool can be seen as essentially an amplifier of a skill or ability. We couldn’t match the strength of the bison, but we used our innovation and figured out how to sharpen stone. This gave us the handaxe - a simple tool but a very consequential one. It allowed us to hunt, and along with fire, eat cooked meat and thus have reserves of protein freeing ourselves to pursue other interests rather than spending all day in the pursuit of food - unlike our nearest primate cousins.

That small innovation in stone of course gives its name to an Age - the Stone Age, the first of several periods all named based on technologies.

Closely tied to the concept of creating new tools and technology is competition. Competition and survival are very closely linked. It was the ability to fashion better tools by homo sapiens that led to the disappearance of other hominid species such as the Neanderthals. And we know only too well, how, between human societies, those groups that have had superior technology on their side have prevailed over other groups. 

One can debate the ethics of such things, but what cannot be denied is that this is a fundamental aspect of human society - we cannot give up the inevitable demand for technological innovation lest we risk our very survival. 

Let’s look at this from another angle - economics. Again, very broadly, the economy is the sum of all the resources and activities needed to sustain technological innovation. Let’s call it the technocentric view, but in this line of thought, all of the economy is seen as enabling better technology. 

Creating new tools and technologies, or indeed sustaining current ones requires the expense of such resources as we can access, the application of novel ideas – the innovation that we’ve already mentioned, and actually making the end products. This can be seen as a success when what comes out is better - has more value, than what went in. One term to describe this is profit, you’re not engaging in a profitable (economically sound) activity when the output is worse than the input. Bread should necessarily be better than the flour it is made from!

This input-output equation is indeed the essence not just of economics or technology, but all life itself. So, yes this applies to everything we do, surely all aspects of industry and technological progress. And one of the resources that goes into the input here is human effort - labor. That this resource goes into the input needs emphasized. In other words, in purely economic terms, it may be defined as a cost. 

It is not hard to see that to get better value, or greater efficiency, we might want to decrease the amount of resources needed to get the same output. And this is only possible by way of technological innovation. Given the above arguments around technological innovation, we see this is good, even necessary - because, individually or collectively, we see the value created from such activity as necessary, even essential. 

Thus it all goes back to satisfying our needs and wants, including ultimately our very survival. This march of technology is inexorable and a one-way street - always marching forward. 

As we increase the value generated in the making of something, using our innovation, that thing tends to become cheaper and more accessible, and with the right amount of innovation, it could go right down to becoming practically zero-cost. 

Consider for example, the cost of sending a message to a distant land. A thousand years ago you could only expect kings to be able to do so. But today you don’t bat an eyelid at the ‘cost’ of sending a text message or email to someone across the globe! And who really wants to go back to the time of pigeons and messengers?

So, now to the key part - AI. Machine intelligence is but an extension of human intelligence. Fundamentally it’s no different from the handaxe that changed the course of our life. AI is but another tool. Like any other tool or technology we have invented, this is an augmentation of an existing skill.

So this naturally leads to the question, if the computer can think and know just as I can think and know, won’t it replace me in my job? It’s indeed a valid question, and as we know, an emotive one too. 

But I’d propose that is not the question we should start with. Stick with me for a moment here. Combining the different concepts I just laid out as first principles, the overall question that first needs to be asked is this: how will this latest, and fast-growing, technology improve the value the economy generates? And would that entail as regards to the cost of goods and services?

Looking at the message-sending example, I would propose that with sufficient application of machine intelligence (which is going to be far superior to our own limited intelligence) into all aspects of the economy, we stand at the brink of bringing down most costs, if not all, to zero or very near zero. 

So, in such a new world, would it even be a problem if human labor is not a necessary part of the economic equation? If it means accessing food, clothing, and other services would all resemble, costwise, sending those texts across the globe?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to paint a picture of this complete utopia where everything will be perfect etc etc. This is not a rehash of the Imagine song! I am only updating the economic equation and taking it to, what I think, may be the logical extension. 

Not having to give our time and effort to eke out a livelihood, in most cases in drudgery, will be liberating! Thus freed from our current set of challenges and problems, we can move on. 

And move on we will, to create new challenges and problems, which, for all you know, might create new types of jobs!