Artificial Intelligence’s Effect on Getting Jobs - What’s Been Happening to the Extent That We Can Tell, and the Outlook

A hot topic ever since AI jumped up to the headlines, a few years ago, is still drawing ink.

“California’s Governor Signs A.I. Order Aimed at Protecting Workers” (Cecilia Kang, The New York Times, May 21^st) related not quite that, but one intended “to explore a broad overhaul of labor policies, an attempt to front run a potential mass job displacement caused by artificial intelligence.”  One thing it did nail down, though, was “an expansion of job training programs, particularly for white-collar workers like customer service representatives, software developers and marketing and sales people.”  With one overlap there are “The Hidden Workers Most Threatened by A.I.” (Ben Casselman, The New York Times, June 10^th,” which also included “bookkeepers, payroll clerks and human resources specialists who fly under the radar but collectively account for tens of millions of jobs.”  Although a researcher said she was concerned that “A.I. will be to high-school-educated women what deindustrialization was to high-school-educated men,” but, as “there is little firm evidence that A.I. has hurt the labor market as a whole,” “such an outcome is a fear, not a forecast.”

Parallel to the conflict above was that “53% of Americans fear AI could take their jobs, poll finds” (Rachel Barber, USA Today, June 10^th).  That number actually included worry about “someone in their household,” and was “consistent across age, gender and education levels, though Democrats were more likely than Republicans to express concern.”

Also, “Big Companies Aim to East A.I. Transition for American Workers” (Lydia DePillis, The New York Times, June 25^th).  Although “the White House, excited about the upside for stocks and investment, has downplayed the potential for widespread job losses,” “a group of employers, state governors and foundations has raised $500 million to” come up with conclusions about what AI regulation we need.  The consortium, Raise Us, “will work primarily with governors, starting with those in Utah, Arkansas, Maryland and Connecticut,” and “plans to furnish technical assistance for companies that want to retain workers as A.I. changes their roles, rather than eliminating them.”  Valuable, especially if others, as I noted recently, continue dragging their feet on this critical issue.

What is happening now?  Ben Casselman, in the New York Times, said that “A.I. Is Reshaping the Economy.  Good Luck Measuring How” (July 2^nd).  Although “pretty much everyone agrees that artificial intelligence has the potential to reshape the economy in the coming decades… no one is sure what effect the technology is having right now.”  “According to some measures, A.I. is contributing to high unemployment rates among new graduates and might already have destroyed tens of thousands of jobs.  Other sources suggest companies might actually be adding workers as a result of the technology.”  It “might be contributing to the U.S. inflation problem, or part of the solution to it.”  As well, “it might be responsible for a recent pickup in productivity growth, or might be playing virtually no role.”  And, if these possibilities seem easier to choose between, “researchers can’t even agree on basic questions like how many companies are using A.I. or which workers are most vulnerable to the disruptions it could cause.”  What a mess!  It is no surprise, then, that a think tank director “published a report documenting the challenge of A.I. measurement and proposing steps to improve it.”  In the meantime, per an economist, “it’s like going to the doctor and getting three different diagnoses for the same condition.”

What is “The Work of Helping A.I. Destroy Work” (Lora Kelley, also in the Times, July 10^th)?  “Every day, Mercor, a start-up that sells training data to artificial intelligence companies, pays 30,000 contractors more than $4 million to help make their jobs, and those of their colleagues, obsolete.”  The people Mercor needs are highly specific, such as “a voice actor able to maintain a customer service persona in fluent Hebrew,” “a Ph.D. physicist with a specialization in general relativity, astrophysics or cosmology,” and “a physician with more than three years of experience in the Rwandan primary care medical system.”  If the company gets the gig workers they need, there will be some obscure corners with remarkably high-quality AI interactions.

As expected, changes that affect people get reactions, such as what Jessica Grose wrote about:   “The Hunt for a Job Has Never Been Worse.  These Applicants Are Fighting Back” (The New York Times, July 18^th).  She called our current setup “the purgatory job market of 2026, in which potential employees are largely evaluated by automated systems, engage in chatbot interviews and, even then, often get no feedback.”  The problem is that “as employers continue to use A.I. to rationalize the process of identifying strong applicants, applicants have begun to use similar tools to game the systems evaluating them,” creating a “vicious cycle” of “a futile “Spy vs. Spy” showdown instead of a useful way to meet the ostensible goal of giving qualified people jobs.”  As laziness is a powerful force, I do not expect much relief through in-person involvement here, so we can expect more bad times for both jobseekers and employers, who “are still having trouble finding genuinely skilled and appropriate employees” while getting “way too many résumés to evaluate.”

The common thread, then, is that AI is rarely helping people get jobs.  Will that continue indefinitely?  Will it somehow improve?  I doubt it, and think we can expect this situation to further feed AI discontent.  So this is another thing artificial intelligence must improve on.  Don’t count on it.