Opinion: Yes, AI is coming for your job

I've got very bad news for everyone who needs to hear it. You aren't owed a job. Not only that, but if a machine can do your job better, then a machine should do it. And that includes AI when, and wherever possible, for the simple reason that you are the few, and as with the introduction of any technology, it is for the benefit and advantage of the many.

That was my immediate and admittedly callous thought on seeing news of a strike taking place at the University of Sydney. In brief, the faculty of arts and education was picketing over the risks presented by AI to their employment.

Within weeks, in New Zealand, the public service went on strike, with one of the signs held aloft by a protester stating 'ChatGPT can't replace me'. Some wit on X subsequently had ChatGPT replace the person's image with one of a cow.

Make no mistake, the AI/employment risks are very real. But protesting is unlikely to deliver a lasting solution because you can't put the genie back in the bottle, even if the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) at the University of Sydney is seeking enforcement of 'appropriate protections around the use of AI'.

Quoted in The Guardian, NTEU spokesperson Peter Chen said "Higher education is the canary in the coalmine. Where we go on AI … will travel through the rest of the economy."

Like the Norwegian Blue, the canary's already dead

Chen isn't wrong, but there are plenty of expired canaries already. Freelance writers (and other creative sorts), me included, saw what I describe as a 'flight to mediocrity' from 2022 to 2023, which has only since accelerated.

Previously plentiful work dried up, if not overnight, then progressively through the spring and summer, until, in March 2023 in my personal circumstance, income was down by 70%.

South African writer Tanya Meeson penned a piece titled 'The Great Pivot', in which she recorded this process and how AI meant 'lifer' freelancers in various creative fields found themselves thrown out of work. Google it, a worthwhile read.

Essentially, our various niches were commoditised overnight. Yes, it sucks. Yes, there was (and is) wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Also yes, it meant just one thing: pivot. Retrain. Examine your value proposition, and if it comes up short because AI can do it, make it less so.

Harsh? Without question. But, again, that brings us to the few and the many. What hurts the few, quite often benefits the many. The individual freelancers like Meeson and me, had little choice but to resign ourselves to a changed world, rather than expecting the world to change around us.

We also had to acknowledge that even if we, as the few, were hurting, the many benefited. Anyone interested in written content could now get an absolute torrent of AI generated 'good enough' content for next to nothing.

Lessons from yesteryear

Economist Henry Hazlitt published Economics in One Lesson in 1946 (available for free online), in which is a chapter titled 'The Curse of Machinery'.

He describes the belief that machines cause unemployment as a persistent fallacy: 'Among the most viable of all economic delusions is the belief that machines on net balance create unemployment. Destroyed a thousand times, it has risen a thousand times out of its own ashes as hardy and vigorous as ever.'

Sound familiar?

The theory is easily tested, as Hazlitt demonstrates and as you can do for yourself. Look at employment statistics over time; despite any number of technological leaps forward unemployment tends to trend down, with notable exceptions in times of crisis like 1929 stock market crash and Great Depression, or perhaps the 2008 GFC.

Remember, too, that the squeaky wheel gets the oil. Noisy protests accompany the few, while the many individuals benefiting from improved access to, say, content (of dubious quality, perhaps) don't say a word.

And new jobs pop into existence with little fanfare; some estimates put the number of new roles that have been created thanks to AI in the millions.

We don't miss the human alarm clock

It all comes down to a potentially trite, yet profoundly simple reality. If you're a writer, a lawyer, a software developer, an accountant, a lecturer in the faculty of arts and education, a bureaucrat, your job may very well be on the chopping block.

Insisting AI isn't going to replace you, or even more plaintively wailing that AI shouldn't replace you because you are important, is a bit like King Canute commanding the tides.

The bottom line is that if it can do a better or even a good enough job, it must, because that delivers a net gain to everyone who once needed your skills. It is also the bedrock on which civilization was built, and the force that put knocker-uppers, pin-boys, elevator and switchboard operators, and commercial content writers out of work.

They were put out of work not because what they did wasn't valuable, but because a machine could do it better, thus releasing those individuals to do something better and more productive with their time. People are capable and flexible, and sometimes when there is no choice but to find something else to do, that is the best choice of all.

Jobs change, they always have, and they always will. What does not change is an infinitely needy society. That leaves all of us to examine what those needs are, and so we can continue adding value and earning rewards for doing so.