“Jobs in Danger”

By Scott Hamilton

I remember a time as a teenager when I dreamed of having a robot to do my chores and my homework. In fact on several occasions I tried to build one with odd parts laying around the house, or with my Erector set. What gave me the idea was an iconic cartoon set in the future. “The Jetsons” were a family living my dream. They had Rosie the robot maid; she cooked their meals, helped the kids with homework, cleaned the house and even helped take care of the pets. All the while her job was made even easier by other technology in the house. They had self-cleaning floors and tables, a chair that brushed your teeth and combed your hair, and my favorite was the self-driving flying cars that took George Jetson from home to work and back again.

I will say that used to be a dream; as we get closer and closer to having that level of technology I am seeing it more as a nightmare. We have already begun to see robots, at least artificial intelligence, start to take over many jobs. When we call the bank, an AI answers the phone and does a fairly good job at taking over the job of the bank teller, as well as the front office secretary. When we go to fast food restaurants, especially the Taco Bell chain in Rolla, Mo., we had better be prepared to place our order either with a phone app or on the digital kiosk because talking to a person at the counter is nearly impossible. The job of the front counter worker has been taken over by a machine, aside from handing out drinks and food. We are not very far from having fully automated kitchens in the same restaurants, meaning that the simple boring and repeatable tasks will be taken over by robots in the next few years.

I used to think this was progress, but looking back 120 years or so and seeing Ford motor company automate much of their assembly line for mass production of the automobile, while being necessary to meet the demand for new cars it also cost a lot of jobs in the factory. Automation has eliminated many factory jobs; where these factories used to employ thousands, many of them can be run with only minor supervision in case of equipment breakdown. We have seen robotics take over many entry level jobs in the last few years and it is only getting worse.

Over the course of even the last year I have seen the abilities of AI increase to the point that entry level programming jobs have even fallen to AI. A majority of software, social media posts, and technology articles from major companies are now being written by AI. I could probably even replace myself in writing these articles with an AI and I’m not sure if anyone would really notice. So that brings me to the reason I changed my mind, from this life where AI can do all the menial tasks being the dream, to it being the nightmare. Our children will likely take little time to think for themselves if they can just ask ChatGPT to write their papers, provide their outlines and do their research. How will they learn to think for themselves?

Their generation, of course, does not see a problem with it, as they have always had computers and the internet. They have grown up being able to ask Google about anything and get a reasonable amount of information back on any topic. I grew up in the age of the encyclopedias being a large collection of books on a shelf in the home or library. My kids now use Wikipedia and have access to more information than I could ever imagine. They have access to the books in thousands of libraries without leaving the home, and can even ask an AI to summarize the books and get research results in seconds. That makes me wonder, are we getting smarter, or is this causing us to get lazy and actually learn less? I don’t really know the answer, but it scares me a little.

I have written a lot in the past about this very topic and the risks to our jobs that AI and robotics bring, but I used to think the jobs in the creative arts were fairly safe. You see, I never imagined an AI gaining the ability to be creative. This week I was proven wrong and frankly it broke my mind just a little. You see a new and fairly popular rock group just admitted to the world that it does not, in fact, exist. The band “Velvet Sundown” just revealed that it is a complete fabrication by AI. The band touts over one million listeners on Spotify, and it was announced three days ago that the entire group was generated by AI. Their songs, their photos, their album covers and even their lyrics were created 100 percent by AI. The question is, how long did it take for fans to realize something was amiss?

I can tell you from the brief history of the band, releasing two albums in the month of June (neither of which topped the charts but still amassed a very respectable audience) and the lack of any evidence of seeing any members of the band in any public or private appearance, it started to raise suspicions among the fans. Surprisingly it was not the AI-generated music or lyrics that clued the fans in, but the telltale signs of AI generation in the photos of the band. So what does this really mean for the music industry? I can tell you now that at least one music platform is taking a stand against AI generated music. ROKK, a platform dedicated specifically to rock and heavy metal, announced that it was implementing measures to allow listeners to report computer-generated content. This report will result in a human review of the content at ROKK and any content shown to be AI generated will be removed from the platform. I have to say I appreciate the stand they are taking, because now even the fun, entertainment level jobs are at risk from AI. When will we take a stand and finally say enough is enough and turn off the AI systems to give ourselves freedom to think, create, design and live? Until next week stay safe and learn something new.

Scott Hamilton is an Expert in Emerging Technologies at ATOS and can be reached with questions and comments via email to shamilton@techshepherd.org or through his website at https://www.techshepherd.org.