AI and the Future. Part 2: The Impact on work

Last week I talked about my own personal journey is discovering and using AI, but this week I wanted to talk about AI and the broader impact on work and job roles.

As per the marketing emails I receive, proponents of AI will tell you that the technology is getting so advanced that it will start taking the jobs of humans. This has been happening since the dawn of time, when humans realised they could domesticate animals and then get them to carry loads, there was no need for human porters, but those now redundant human porters could move into animal husbandry and stable making. Similarly the street gas lighters of the early 20^th century were out of work when electricity came in, but they had the option to move into newly created electrician jobs. And more recently, the rise of the internet and ecommerce has significantly reduced the number of bank cashier and travel agent jobs, but has created a whole new world of jobs in SEO.

The jobs that are at highest risk are those that are based of having comprehensive knowledge of something, where a lot of information has to be learned. Linguists and translators are a good example, it takes a lot of effort to learn a new language, but if we all have google translate, or systems can translate your words in real time to the language of a listener, there are less opportunities for linguists to work in professional environments where their language skills are of use. Apple has announced it will release glasses in 2026 that will have a live translate feature – imagine being on holiday, or at a professional conference and you can hear in perfect English whatever words are being spoken to you in a foreign language? These types of systems will become ubiquitous in the coming years and I think will raise the questions of whether we should be teaching languages in schools? Languages have not been mandated at GCSE level since 2004 and since then the number of students choosing a language has been falling. I think AI will accelerate that decline, and I think there is a strong case to make Computing and Technology more prominent in the curriculum.

Law is another profession under threat from AI, it’s a vast field with countless sub specialties. And in some areas of law, the value of a lawyer is in knowing the law inside out, and knowing the relevant case law related to that field. But imagine a super lawyer, who knew every area of law intimately, and all case law, and not only that but could recall it a moments notice? That’s potentially a large language model, trained on every single statute, every official court record and every law journal publication.

The same is true of accounting and tax, this is a field which is heavily based on rules, knowledge and principles. I recently parted company with my accountant, because we had one or two professional disagreements, but also because I realised that Chat GPT was answering my accounting queries very competently, not to mention instantaneously. It just didn’t make sense to pay his services anymore when I can pay $20 a month to Open IA for Chat GPT to do pretty much the same work, and maybe a couple of hundred pounds to an accountant to review and sign off some returns and filings. Just the other week I created a project folder in Chat GPT and uploaded last year’s accounts plus various reports from our accounting package. After a couple of clarifying questions Chat GPT had compiled my latest set of accounts, the entire process took less than an hour.

There will be some safer jobs of course – anything that relies on some kind of physical skill, I think you are more secure! Hairdressers, roofers, dancers, actors, physiotherapists, plumbers etc. At some point the robotics industry will catch up with AI, and we will have robots will human levels of dexterity and skill, but I think that is a way off, which means workers in these jobs are safer for a lot longer than the average lawyer or software engineer.

But the direction of travel is irrefutable, and at some point humans are going to run out of jobs. Since the dawn of time, mankind has been replacing itself with technology and machinery. We used to harvest crops manually, then combine harvesters were invented, we used to weave textiles by hand and then looms were invested, we used to have cashiers in banks, and then ATMs were invested. Every time we have automated a job we have shifted right and done something else, and usually something else more sophisticated that makes greater use of the human ingenuity and brain. But what if we are running out of space on the right? There will come a point where there is no field left where humans are better than machines and technology. Because when we reach that point there is no point in the human doing the job anymore, we may aswell just let the machines crack on.