Yesterday I had a short conversation with a neighbor that has worked 29 years in IT and want to switch his direction to work more with people. He predicted that in 10 years, there won’t be much technical jobs anymore. He will have a conversation this week to see if the role of technical trainer is something for him. I really like his thinking, and I also want to elaborate around this topic into a deeper level.
Yes, with the rapid evolution of AI, a lot of people will lose their competitive edge to those who are better at using AI, or simply to AI itself. Every job that count a lot on knowledge, or more specifically technical knowledge that can be abstracted into math, data, and logic, is largely influenced by AI now. In 10 years, I would predict 10% of such jobs will be done by those mastering the interaction with AI, and the other 90% will disappear. So if your job now is more than 4 hours working in front of a computer a day, and you won’t be retired in 10 years, you also better think about this issue seriously.
Imagine the worst case, where in 10 years, AI have evolved into a knows-it-all Wikipedia that can talk and listen. Empowered from it, robots have been developed into a stage that they can operate a surgery without intervention from a human doctor. Where is our position, the species that can think and execute?
First of all, we should be confident about our and hence AI’s inability to grasp the sophistication of a human body. Unlike robots that are made by components, human bodies are made of cells, each cell fulfil certain function in micro scale, and communicate with neighbors to fulfil certain function in macro scale. We may have an idea of how our muscles, bones, and skin function at the macro scale, but we know very little about what is happening in the micro scale. We and the AI miss a large portion of knowledge to make robots that has comparable energy efficiency, adaptability, dynamic range, and acuteness of human bodies. Until we know how our body works and how to engineer parts to replace the sophisticated functions, to the single cell level, robots wills stay in the status of tools for, instead of replacements of humans.
On the other side, though the digital world is trying its best to swallow us in, taking advantages of our sexual impulses, ambition, and curiosity, we live in a physical world around real human beings. We have so many needs that can’t be fulfilled with digits. I know our imagination can fake a lot of things, that is why we are fond of movies, games, and porn. But if giving a chance, who would prefer the fake versions? Physical body has physical needs to be fulfilled that requires service of other people. Service is one of our positions in the age where AI rises no matter to what height. In fact, service has always been and will always be the core position of each human being. Out of service comes fulfillment, and meaning of life. That is the topic of another post in the future, maybe. I don’t know if I am qualified to talk about it, to be honest.
Anyway, back to the plan of my neighbor. He wants to work on another job that has more touch with people. That is first of all a plan aligned with basic human need. Every adult is doing a service to other human beings. Or say it bluntly, every man is a salesman. Programmers are making programs that service their customers or bosses; researchers are doing researches for the well-being of human beings, not merely for their curiosity; farmers are doing a service for the eaters. However, with some jobs, the distance from the worker and the person to be served can be far, or the work tends to be too abstract. This leads to a lack of feeling of fulfillment. So from one level it make sense that one want to see directly how they are serving others and where their impact is. On the other hand, the impact or worth of ones work is proportional to the income he receives in a well functional society, and proportional to how satisfied his direct customers are. People always complains that scientist that made a great contribution to the humanity were paid very little, while people in high positions earned much more by doing almost nothing. But if we consider the direct customer idea I just mentioned, it is easier to understand. Scientists’ direct customer live in the future, no one get paid by unborn people. One man, no matter how smart or skillful or hard working, can achieve only so much, but with the organization, arrangement, and coordination of politicians or managers, a group of people can build airplanes, dams, and well-functional nations. Their direct customers gladly pay them for their work. So the greatest influence of a human being comes from his influence to other people, not to objects, or objective world. Skillful people, smart people, from farmers to engineers to scientists are, through out the history, components being used by the social machine, instead of the CPU driving the machine. From this aspect, it is a wise choice to work more with people, instead of technology or things.
From an more practical level, this plan is aligned with a future where AI excels in knowledge, logic reasoning, search, listening and speaking. As explained previously, soon we humans will lose competition in these technical jobs very soon. At this moment, AI is already excelling in programming due to massive training data on this field on the internet. In theory, any knowledge that can be written in language, can be learnt by AI. That unfortunately include almost all the knowledge that we can learn, because we learn mostly through language, and think with language. I say “almost” here because knowledge is not all we learn, but that is again a topic for another article. For here, it is safe to say that AI should be an awakening call for all knowledge workers, simply from a practical point of view, if you don’t agree with the more fundamental nature of how our society works that I wrote above.
Myself is very convinced by the points I wrote above, the constant struggle for now is figuring out what to do? As a scientist/engineer by education and nature, someone who is good at and interested in dealing with technology or things, and terrible at deal with people, what to do. I don’t have answers, only assumptions that need to be verified by my own life.