... see you on October 6th with the jobs report and the AJSN!
Work's New Age
Friday, September 22, 2023
Friday, September 15, 2023
Artificial intelligence, as Summer Wraps Up
What has been written about AI since late July?
First, we had “4 careers where workers will have to change
jobs by 2030 due to AI and shifts in how we shop, according to a McKinsey
study” (Jacob Zinkula, Business Insider, July 28th). The areas are “office support, customer
service and sales, food services, and production work (e.g.
manufacturing).” The emphasis here is on
“lower-wage jobs,” with “clerks, retail salespersons, administrative
assistants, and cashiers” each expected to lose more than 600,000 positions,
net, in the next seven years.
Kevin Roose spotlighted one apparent area of early adoption
in “Aided by A.I. Language Models, Google’s Robots Are Getting Smart,” in The
New York Times on the same date. He
started by describing an automaton responding to “pick up the extinct animal”
by doing so with a dinosaur model instead of a lion or a whale, a seeming
merger between AI and robotics, and meaning that much more along that line
would also be possible. Additionally, we
have, per a Google scientist, such devices discovering “how to speak robot” by guessing
“how a robot’s arm should move to pick up a ball or throw an empty soda can
into the recycling bin.” When machines
do these things consistently correctly, which they do not yet, they will be
especially valuable. The next day the Times
published Ben Ryder Howe’s “The Robots We Were Afraid of Are Already Here,”
which was disappointing, as there seemed little new here among these automata’s
industrial capabilities.
A subject we would all like to succeed at is “How to invest
in AI” (Kim Clark, Kiplinger, July 29th). Since February, people expecting to be hugely
important have long since pushed up some stocks and have done much more trading
as developments and even plans have materialized, so we’re way up from any
ground floor. It’s reminiscent of buying
automotive stocks in the 1920s, when knowing the industry had great potential did
not mean we knew who the winners and losers would be. Given that, though, there are industry
leaders looking less risky than others – ones Clark named were chip designers
Nvidia, Broadcom, and Taiwan Semiconductor, along with chip software maker
Synopsis. All are risky, but
huge-potential investments always are.
Controversy stepped into an area in progress for years, as
“This tech is the ‘sad reality’ of restaurant industry’s future, business owner
says robot works 12 hours a day” (Hannah Ray Lambert, Fox News, August
13th). When an Estacada,
Oregon eatery, in response to not finding enough servers, deployed a Plato
automaton to do their work, the owner got “customer pushback.” Strange, but may prove to be common.
Expecting the technology to be stronger, not weaker, than
people thought months ago, was Arantza Pena Popo, in “AI is going to eliminate
way more jobs than anyone realizes” (Insider, August 14th). The
author said that “permanent mass employment can safely be ruled out,” but
hundreds of millions of people may not be able to work their current jobs in 35
years or less. Beyond that, it’s just a
great mass of unknowns.
A question on the minds of most in this field is “The U.S.
Regulates Cars, Radio and TV. When Will
It Regulate A.I.?” (Ian Prasad Philbrick, The New York Times, August 24th). Per Philbrick’s determination, it “probably
won’t happen soon,” as while television was regulated within five years of
“invention or patenting,” radio took 20, telephones took 30, and railroads and
automobiles were not delimited until 60 and 70 years later. While “regulation often happens gradually as
a technology improves or an industry grows,” “sometimes it happens only after
tragedy.” Accordingly, it may, or may
not, take a while.
Related to my post suggesting similar things four days
earlier was “The A.I. Revolution Is Coming, But Not as Fast as Some People
Think,” by Steve Lohr in the New York Times on August 29th. Reservations and reasons for going slower
named here are “risks of leaking confidential data, questions about how the
data is used and about the accuracy of the A.I.-generated answers,” and it cited
another McKinsey study suggesting “mainstream adoption” would take somewhere
between 8 and 27 years. By then, other
problems, such as copyright infringement, may still be significant. So don’t expect anything big for a while –
but let’s still stay tuned.
Friday, September 8, 2023
Liking Remote Work Won’t Change Its Downward Trend
Although I think the working-from-home cons have more merit than the pros, there have been a significant number of articles favoring the latter. What do they have to say?
Hiding his opinion even less than I do mine was Gleb
Tsipursky, in the May 8th Fortune piece “Why your boss is
giving in to the siren call of the return to the office – and giving up on the
flexible work gold mine.” The author
called the idea that “many organizations are struggling to foster strong
communication, collaboration, and team bonding” when people worked remotely
“startling,” and said that companies, as they became “faced with challenges,” “rather
than learning to adapt,” were “tempted to go back to the cozy confines of the
office-centric model.” The piece offered
no substantive suggestions for improvement, only that management should
overcome “status quo bias” and “functional fixedness,” “adopt methods of
building culture, collaboration, team bonding, and communication that are a
good fit for a hybrid environment,” and “stop running” from “the future of work,”
which is “here.”
Paul Krugman, the columnist and Nobel-winning economist,
told us, in “Working From Home and Realizing What Matters,” in The New York
Times on May 22nd, that the value of remote labor should be
raised in our estimations, because of reduced commuting time, which is
undercounted or not counted in other measures.
True – if work hours are no longer.
The same author had “Remote work hasn’t doomed cities. It may even help them” in the same
publication on June 2nd. His
thought here was that “people who don’t have to commute to the office every day
spend more time frequenting local shops, restaurants and so on, improving the
quality of their neighborhoods,” although “remote work will surely shift
metropolitan areas’ centers of gravity away from their central business
districts.”
Similar in tone to the first article, Breck Dumas wrote in Fox
Business about “Why some bosses hate remote work and what can be done about
common gripes” (July 17th). The
five major reasons the author saw were “inadequate communication and
collaboration” (which called for managers to “reach out to their remote workers
and stay connected with them in other ways, like through phone or video calls”),
“task allocation and clarity” (by setting SMART – specific, measurable,
achievable, relevant, time-bound – parameters), “time management” (by
“providing workers with training on time management techniques and encouraging
prioritization and delegation”), “workload and resource allocation” (“regularly
assess workloads, redistribute tasks as needed and ensure individuals have
access to the necessary tools, training and support”), and “recognition and
reward” (find ways of celebrating achievements with “elements of fun,” even on
Zoom calls).
Finally, some advice on “Making a successful data-driven
transition to hybrid work” (Louis Blatt, Benefit News, August 1st),
namely to “find out what your employees need” and “give workers some space,”
along with habitually “explicitly dividing your project management into two
categories: focused/individual work and
collaborative work.”
How did you like the above?
If you did, you’re probably in favor of plenty of remote work. If you didn’t, you saw blitheness, vagueness,
superficiality, and confusing training with individual performance. The pendulum between in-person and remote
labor is still moving – it is now pulling strongly toward the office. If it were not, there would be few calls for
workers to come back, and little controversy about it. Dressing as vegetables on celebratory video
calls won’t change that. Assuming that everyone
will be focused and conscientious when faced with the temptation of being
unsupervised won’t alter its back-and-forth nature. That’s not only the present, but the future
of work. That’s what we have known since
the first George Bush was president – and what, indefinitely, we will continue
to know.
Friday, September 1, 2023
Unemployment Up, Job Gains Robust, More People on Sidelines, Latent Demand from AJSN 145,000 Higher
In this morning’s Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation Summary, we were supposed to be keying on the number of net new nonfarm payroll positions, often just referred to as “jobs.” It was a fine one, 187,000, an even ten percent over a published 170,000 estimate. As excellent as that is and keeps being, with total population growth lower, some other outcomes were more surprising and less favorable.
Seasonally adjusted unemployment jumped 0.3% to 3.8%, with
the unadjusted variety up 0.1% to 3.9%.
That reflected lower than seasonally expected August hiring, or, more
likely, additional firing or layoffs, an effect from bankruptcies (Yellow Corporation)
and strikes (Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio
Artists). The number of officially unemployed
gained 600,000 to 6.4 million, and those with jobs fell 55,000 to
161,427,000. The count of those claiming
no interest in work also increased 600,000, reaching 93,682,000. The number of long-term unemployed, in that
state for 12 months or longer, also rose, 100,000 to 1.3 million, while those
working part-time for economic reasons, or holding shorter-hours jobs while
seeking full-time ones, tacked on another 200,000 to 4.2 million. The two measures of how common it is for
Americans to be either working or officially jobless, the labor force participation
rate and the employment-population ratio, gained 0.2% and broke even
respectively, ending at 62.8% and 60.4%.
Average hourly private nonfarm payroll earnings gained 8 cents per hour,
a tiny bit less than inflation, to $33.82.
The American Job Shortage Number or AJSN, the measure
showing how many additional positions could be quickly and easily filled if
getting one were perceived as no more difficult than another household errand, rose
modestly to the following:
The AJSN added 226,000 from higher unemployment, but lost overall
in categories of marginal attachment, mostly those wanting work but not looking
for it for a year or more. The share of
the AJSN from people officially jobless is still a clear minority, 35.5%, up
1.1%. There was remarkably little year-over-year
AJSN difference, a 116,000 increase, following the same pattern as the change
from July 2023, as higher unemployment was partially offset by a smaller number
of those not putting forth searching efforts for 12 months or longer.
What happened here?
It seemed that there was a real mixture of people thrown out of work,
probably in the case of truckers and writers temporarily, those deciding not to
make themselves available for a while, and solid growth otherwise. The weakest outcomes, such as total
unemployment, wages, and the count of those working part-time for economic reasons,
gave back only parts of recent improvements.
The bottom line is indeed that 187,000.
Few have acknowledged how favorable it is for our labor force to be continuously
growing, but there is no reason for that to be happening, month after month
after month. We would have a strong
economy even if we averaged 100,000 fewer.
If negative trends continue this month we may not be able to say this,
but, once more, the turtle took another step forward.
Friday, August 25, 2023
Artificial Intelligence, With Problems Galore, is Getting Boxed In
Five weeks ago, I published a post about an artificial intelligence backlash, or reactions against it from various directions. Since then, when we factor out the news stories speculating about AI’s effects on employment, telling us about new or not-so-new robotics advances, and subjective investment advice, there hasn’t been much good, and it adds up to something worse.
First, as shown in “CheatGPT,” by Aki Ito in Business
Insider on August 1st, we have workers using AI against company
rules, taking advantage of lagging or overly cautious policies as well as thoughtfully
reasoned ones. That is really an issue
between employer and employee but could turn out to cause the former real
problems when accuracy is not what it seems.
Such isn’t rare, as “When Hackers Descended to Test A.I., They Found
Flaws Aplenty” (Sarah Kessler and Tiffany Hsu, The New York Times,
August 16th). At the Defcon
hacker’s conference this month, participants “tried to break through the
safeguards of various A.I. programs in an effort to identify their
vulnerabilities.” They were able to get
the software to make racist and discriminatory statements, select sample job
applicants by Indian caste, and write factually about nonexistent people,
places, and constitutional amendments.
Efforts like these, in this case strictly benevolent, are invaluable, with
experts revealing previously unknown flaws – the bad news is that those
shortcomings are real.
Is, or will it, be true that “AI is ruining the internet”
(Arantza Pena Popo, Business Insider, August 8th)? The programs are now able to defeat many of
the human-verifying “captchas,” causing sites to make theirs so difficult many
actual people cannot get through. A
Europol study estimated that within “a few years,” ninety percent “of internet
content” will be produced by AI systems and will contain significant
errors. That could result in online
resources seeming “engineered for the machines and by the machines,” its value could
greatly decrease, and it may in turn poison future AI improvements.
The most telling of these articles, though, is “Digging for
digits” (The Economist, August 19th). It told us about how the world is running out
of accessible, non-copyrighted data, for which companies are competing and
paying increasing amounts to use. Some
of that will be inputs into ChatGPT 5, which may be released before the end of
the year.
But how about ChatGPT 6?
If we see that one someday, it may not be fundamentally better. Why?
Although conceptually it could be boundless, artificial
intelligence is being stopped on several different fronts. First is copyright problems, with
unauthorized incorporation of legally protected work well integrated into
ChatGPT 4, and certain to result in further lawsuits and massive settlements,
with a chance that its entire knowledge set could need to be erased and
rebuilt. Second is chip shortages –
developing large language models at contemporary strengths consumes more
silicon than it can get. Third is calls
for more regulation, which, with governmental authorities perennially behind
the curve with technical issues, could impede or even halt development,
production, or both. Fourth is an
upcoming data shortage as above.
The fifth limit, and perhaps the ultimate, is money. ChatGPT 5 will cost in the billions of
dollars. Since growth is exponential,
there is a real chance that ChatGPT 6 or its equivalent would run in the
hundreds of billions. Even in as
future-oriented a field as information technology, companies, venture
capitalists, and other lenders and resource providers want results quickly and
will see the other four problems.
Six years ago, driverless cars seemed poised to take over
world roads within a generation. Now,
although they have done well in useful if controversial niches such as taxicab
travel, and their technology is turning up more and more in human-driven autos,
their overall development has apparently stalled, with little press about them
becoming the norm. A serious around-1970
prediction said that within two decades artificial hearts would be, after cars,
the second largest American industry – it is now possible to get one, but its
implementations are measured in dozens.
The same may happen with artificial intelligence. It may find its role in business writing, and
as a lower-end substitute for human effort.
By 2040, people may laugh about the idea that this business tool could
take over the world, and compare its dangers to those of copiers. Or not.
Will artificial intelligence stay way short of its potential? I don’t know, but we need to seriously
consider that possibility.
Friday, August 18, 2023
Uber, Lyft, and Gigs in General – How Are They Doing?
A lot has piled up here about working without conventional jobs. Let’s see what it is.
Oldest is “Biden Proposal Could Lead to Employee Status for
Gig Workers” (Noam Scheiber, The New York Times, October 11th). That wouldn’t be wide open, but rather
“lowers the bar for that employee classification,” by incorporating “how much
control workers have over how they do their jobs and how much opportunity they
have to increase their earnings by doing things like offering new
services.” The piece, though, is more
about how current laws are often disobeyed by companies preferring workers to
be contractors. Consistently correct
categorization would do more for those with gigs than changing it. As for Megan Henney’s October 12th
Fox Business response that “Biden’s proposed gig worker rule could deal
a major blow to small businesses,” the end of slavery did that as well.
Also on the 11th, The New York Times told
us to “Meet the App That Helps Gig Workers Know How Much They Really Make”
(Erin Griffith). It’s Para. Not a cost-accounting product, but one that
gets into company databases and reveals how much workers will be paid, often
including tip amounts, so they can accept or refuse giving rides or delivering
restaurant orders. The product delighted
neither Uber nor DoorDash, who both sent Para “cease-and-desist letters.” Para provides information important enough
for one driver to report that “a no-tip order from Red Lobster could mean less
than $3 for 30 minutes of work during a peak time.” Overall, if companies freely provided this
information, there would be no need for anyone to get it any other way.
From the front ridesharing lines came “What Shocked Me Most
When I Became a Lyft Driver for a Week” (Timothy B. Lee, Slate.com,
December 22nd). The reporter found
great variation in his portion of what Lyft charged, from “less than 30
percent” to “more than 80 percent,” and over the week collected 52%. Interesting, since the rate Yellow Cab of
Milwaukee paid when I worked there in 1976, for those preferring a percentage
of fares, was 55% – with the company providing the taxi. As Lee put it, “it seems that the smartphone
revolution didn’t make taxi dispatching cheaper and more efficient. It made it way more expensive.” So, perhaps, could someone create a cheaper
rideshare model?
Three articles on the other large de facto cab company
appeared in the New York Times over five weeks. “Uber Drivers Say They Are Struggling: ‘This
Is Not Sustainable’” (Winnie Hu and Ana Ley, January 12th). That’s no wonder, if they need to pay for
their cars out of 52% of fair market fares.
Yet they have learned something – one interviewee said he was leaving to
drive a truck. Also, little shock that
“Uber Reports Record Revenue as It Defies the Economic Downturn” (Kellen
Browning, February 8th). It
was $8.6 billion from October to December 2022, of which $595 million was
profit. Yet “Financial Woes Thrust Lyft,
Long in Uber’s Shadow, Into the Spotlight” (also Kellen Browning, February 15th). On their “record revenue of $1.2 billion in
its most recent quarter,” they lost $588 million. Strange.
Moving almost six months later, we heard that “Minneapolis
Uber, Lyft drivers want minimum wage, companies say it could be worse for
riders” (Mills Hayes, Fox Business, August 2nd). I could not have imagined that as a cabdriver,
when, over full-length days, I netted over double the $1.80 per hour I got
elsewhere the next year. And yes, Uber
and Lyft opposed that, perhaps because it illuminated how little many earn
after expenses.
Last, could it be that emphasis on gigs is causing “The
death of hobbies” (Eve Upton-Clark, Insider, July 31st)? Not really.
Since my early teens, I have consistently sought out ways of earning
money from what I enjoy, and have done that, with different things, most of my
life. That does lead to wanting a true
avocation when others become vocations. Yes,
as the author says, going for profit can cut down other activities in that
area, as, for example, reselling collectibles cuts compatibility with keeping
them for yourself, but people can always adjust what they do. A great deal of the fun remains – and the
advantage of earning money instead of spending it can, over decades, be
remarkable. So, find the right choices
for you and go right ahead – you’ll probably like it.
Friday, August 11, 2023
Hiring Policy – What’s New and What Could Be Next?
Something not getting much attention, except recently with artificial intelligence making inroads and causing controversy, is how employers hire. These articles are spread over ten months, but it takes a while to get news on this subject, about which companies can be secretive.
Finally, “Globalization has come for US tech jobs” (Aki Ito,
Business Insider, September 28th). What took it so long? I predicted in 2012’s Work’s New Age
that that would happen quickly, given that most such positions need little or
no in-person presence, and Russia and India, to name only two, had many skilled
candidates not expecting American pay scales.
But now we can read about “the payroll startup Deel,” which “wants to
prioritize hiring the best candidates regardless of location,” and is looking
on at least three continents. Per this
piece, companies learned how people can collaborate remotely from the pandemic,
so some are taking that further. Dare I
say that we should expect much more?
After that is “5 jobs U.S. employers plan to outsource,” by
Lee Hafner on November 17th in Benefit News. Really fields instead of positions, they are
human resources, information technology, marketing, sales, and software
development and testing. That’s two in computers,
a departure from IT’s frequent appearances, as late as last year, in listings
of best careers. The others are somewhat
surprising, as some sales, HR, and marketing research must indeed be done in
person. It is possible that this list,
after the remote-work backlash, would be different now.
Something worth considering is Brock Dumas’s December 23rd
Fox Business “Trouble filling a job?
Look at hiring someone with a criminal record, HR pro says.” This article and the next address
re-examining hiring restrictions, appropriate when potential employees are
scarce. The author cited studies showing
that employees with such history were not only as reliable and effective as
those without it, but often more, as they have “fewer options.” As well, “former offenders” can be “less expensive
to hire.” People can be given positions
less pertinent to their previous crimes, and their status may not be relevant
at all.
Another approach, taking place in other areas, is to
evaluate credential requirements, many of which were installed when hirers
wanted to thin jobseekers’ ranks. The
largest is the subject of “See Workers as Workers, Not as a College Credential”
(Editorial Board, The New York Times, January 28th). Points made here were to follow the example
of Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, who, ten days before this piece’s press
time, “eliminated the requirement of a four-year college degree for the vast
majority of jobs in the state government.”
It is easy to use graduation as a proxy for various general skills and
attributes, but interviews, among other tools, can serve that function also. We may not go back to the age, during some of
our lifetimes, when people wanting business careers usually did not attend
college, but we can loosen general education’s grip.
We may forget that, just before the big artificial intelligence
news, 100,000 people in information technology lost their jobs. Per Tyler Le in Business Insider on
February 14th, “Big Tech’s massive layoffs will come back to haunt
it.” The author maintained that the
bloodletting has badly hurt the field’s reputation, especially for a generation
valuing stability, so IT may no longer be “the destination of choice for the
smartest kids at the best schools.” But
what goes down often goes back up.
I finish with a newer hiring-related issue, as “Affirmative
Action Ruling May Upend Hiring Policies, Too” (Noam Scheiber, The New York
Times, June 30th). “The
Supreme Court’s rejection of race-conscious admissions in higher education” has
been rippling outward, with potential for new attitudes even in legally
unrelated areas. With the lawfulness of
hiring policies favoring certain groups already in doubt, we can look for many
changes as new practices take hold. As
with the other issues raised here, that may take a while.