Why AI Actually Won't Take Your Job

Today on the AI Daily Brief, we're discussing why AI actually won't take your job. The AI Daily Brief is a daily podcast and video about the most important news and discussions in AI. Alright, friends. Quick announcements before we dive in. First of all, thank you to today's sponsors, KPMG, robots and pencils, Blitsy, and AIUC. To get an ad free version of the show, go to patreon.com/aidailybrief, or you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts. To learn about sponsoring the show, sign up for our newsletter, or anything else in the ecosystem, go to a idailybrief.ai. Today, it is a weekend day, which means, of course, that this is a Big Think episode. And today, we're taking on a topic that is just about as fraught as anything in artificial intelligence. That is, of course, the question of job displacement. Every day, there is some new story about a company reducing its workforce, blaming AI at least in part, or some study which shows all the jobs that could be replaced by AI. And it's not like Americans are particularly comfortable with the state of the economy already. Now I want to make clear that my argument this episode is not that we shouldn't be concerned at all about jobs. My argument is that, in general, we're having the wrong conversations about it. So let's talk about a few reasons why will AI replace all the jobs is the wrong question. The first problem is that it sort of acts as though white collar jobs are the only category that matters. Now white collar jobs are a big part of the total US workforce, and it is absolutely true that one of the reasons that this particular wave of technology driven job displacement is hitting people so much differently. Frankly, most of the previous tech disruptions that we've experienced, or that we've had in our history, have hit blue collar and physical jobs first. The fact that AI is, on the other hand, coming first for white collar jobs is a real reversal of that trend with some fairly big implications. White collar workers are proportionally more economically well off and by extension politically enfranchised, which to be clear is not me saying that that's a good thing. It's just the way that it is. And so the potential for backlash and politically potent backlash to AI, I think goes up. And yet still it's very clear that one of the things that's happening with AI is that it's reminding people that white collar knowledge work type jobs aren't all that's out there. In fact, it's kind of exposing a little bit at least that the pipeline to white collar jobs, do really well in high school, get into a good college, go massively into debt for your college degree, make it all back with your nice white collar job, was broken before AI ever came along. College is too expensive and didn't translate well enough into high earning …