The Future of Jobs in a Large Language Model Embedded World 🌏
The Future of Jobs in a Large Language Model Embedded World 🌏
Diving into the WEF paper on the "Jobs of Tomorrow"
Hey Everyone,
As you know I’m obsessed with the future of work topic, and I’ve been surveying, summarizing and synthesizing my ideas on these reports.
In this Newsletter we’ve covered Goldman Sachs, OpenAI, McKinsey, Deloitte, LinkedIn among many others in our review. These are the reports of highly distinguished economists. We’ve also tabulated thoughts and research by the World Economic Forum, among others.
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It’s been amusing to read the research of economists and consulting firms, who seek to profit from this adaption to an LLM-native world, one that seeks to rapidly adopt LLMs and Generative A.I. into their products (whether corporate, consulting or political tools) and changes perhaps the future of jobs and the future of industry.
Their arguments and conclusions are good reading but often premature. It’s too soon to make these generalizations and their data is too fragmentary, biased and in sales loops of self-fulfilling prophecies. The economists seem to be trapped in the mandates of their larger organizations and their respective brand narratives. Public relations by powerful entities is clouding the picture and distorting even our ability to predict the future.
With BigTech and the media exaggerating the hype and efficacy of Generative and Interactive A.I. tools and agents, we aren’t just stoking fear, we are stoking misinformation. In historical retrospect, many of these reports will have projections that don’t fall in line with the facts. In a world where LLMs hallucinate and powerful corporate entities govern the roll-out of LLMs into the world, what are facts?
The hype is convenient for shareholders of BigTech, but how about the workers in late-stage Capitalism seemingly at their mercy?
Three in Four Americans Believe AI Will Reduce Jobs
It’s leading to a lot of confusion around the future of work. Three in four Americans now believe AI will reduce jobs. According to a recent Gallup poll, most Americans think artificial intelligence (AI) will negatively affect the U.S. job market, with 75% saying it will decrease the total number of jobs over the next 10 years.
While YouTube is filled with doomsday interviews of the existential risks of A.I., topics like automation and technological loneliness are rarely covered. Meanwhile A.I. luminaries have books to sell.
Nearly half of CEOs believe AI could replace their own jobs, says new poll—and 47% say that’s a good thing
Even managers, CEOs and executives see their jobs as somewhat replaceable. Nearly half of CEOs — 49% — say AI could effectively replace “most,” or even “all,” of their own roles.
Younger Americans are less pessimistic than their older counterparts about AI, with two-thirds of adults aged 18 to 29 saying it will decrease the total number of jobs, compared with 72% of 30- to 44-year-olds, 79% of 45- to 59-year-olds, and 80% of those aged 60 and older.
Most U.S. adults don't believe benefits of AI outweigh the risks, new survey finds
Axios says the majority of U.S. adults don't believe the benefits of artificial intelligence outweigh the risks, according to a new Mitre-Harris Poll released Tuesday.
A significant majority of U.S. adults supports efforts to enhance AI’s transparency and safety.
85% support a nationwide effort across government, industry, and academia to make AI safe and secure. This support is strong across Republicans (82%), Democrats (87%), and Independents (85%).
Other key findings include:
52% of employed respondents are worried AI will replace their jobs.
64% percent believe the primary purpose of AI is to assist, enhance, and empower consumers, down 7 points from November 2022.
80% worry about AI being used for cyber attacks, 78% worry about it being used for identity theft, and 74% worry about it being used to create deceptive political ads.
Only 46% believe AI technologies are ready for use in mission-critical applications for defense and national security, down 8% from November 2022.
Salesforce on Who are actually the real world adaptors of LLMs
A Salesforce’s survey found that 51% of the general population has never used generative AI while 49% has used the technology. About 65% of generative AI users are members of Gen Z or millennials, and 72% of users are currently employed.
With so many LLMs, copilots, chatbots and supposedly augmented products and AI-human hybrid jobs coming into being, what are we supposed to make of these opinion polls?
With so few actual players calling the shots and so little actual real-world adoption, is might turn out to be a tech fad. ChatGPT traffic is now dependent on if students are on summer break or not. Most of the GenZ use of generative A.I. is around cheating at school or productivity cheating at work.
A majority of Americans have never used Generative A.I., and certainly aren’t monthly or daily active users. Men were typically more excited than concerned about AI technologies (51%) than women (40%). Economists at LinkedIn in their deep dive report did outline how automation from Generative A.I. could impact women and young people a lot worse (but buried this section far into the report).
It turns out this image (below) does not tell the full story. (and the various PR campaigns masquerading as studies we’ve been exposed to).
So let’s get on to the actual article.
On September 18th, 2023 the WEF published their latest iteration in their Jobs of Tomorrow report, Language Models and Jobs. (in collaboration with Accenture).
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In this article I will continue my thinking and analysis of this report, so you don’t have to read it yourself. As an independent analyst and future of work researcher I too have my own biases. But what is really going on and what does the latest World Economic Forum try to tell us?
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