There was a time -not long ago- when the term Artificial Intelligence left the reign of science fiction and became a practical joke, on social and traditional media. Now, lately, any mention of it around the unemployment problem is kinda creepy.

For starters, it’s a potential job killer. It just arrived at the worst possible moment, when we have so many people dealing with education, work, education-for-work, so limited natural resources and, again, all coming out at once of a global pandemic.

  

Will AI kill the content creation industry?

That’s a main concern nowadays. The Writers Guild of America strike -with the Screen Actor’s Guild joining them- is not only about a fairer split of profits from the streaming and entertaining industry. It’s also about safeguarding AI rights over productions.

Now, Hollywood is just being affected by a major problem on development that has been announced for many years. It first arrived in the form of bots and automated messages and now, thanks to technology advances, can produce sophisticated contents to mimic a human. And, in this case, take his job as well.

Layoffs during Covid times made the world economy suffer enough, causing inflation and supply chain problems yet to be fixed. Unemployment has always kicked countries and families in the teeth, with 6.7% of the world’s workforce still in idle state and young citizens trying to join the workforce with limited experience. And the only sure thing both the United Nations and the International Labour Organization agree on it’s that uncertainty expectation will remain.

Work perspectives have shifted, so has unemployment. Economies around the world try to recover and high inflation pushes personal and family finances to diversify and think out of the box to bring home some extra cash to pay the bills.

Lockdowns around the world impacted employment in most sectors, shifting the culture towards a non-present scenario. Industries that required worker proximity were the most impacted, since many of the activities in question rely on group proximity. While all this happened, the idea of making more intelligent Bots to help with Home based jobs sounded entertaining but developed other implications as we’ll discuss later.

 

Are the young workers more vulnerable to AI job stealing?

Before Covid-19, traditional economy policies tried to make digital jobs look shady. All jobs in the digital economy, like platform-based distance work, was framed as unstable and uncertain as regards future earnings, and usually was labelled as a potential scam. It turned out that this kind of work was particularly attractive for young people in low‑ and middle‑income countries because it pays well and the lack of job security is perceived as less problematic by young people given the lack of physical work alternatives.

Being underage to work is illegal in most countries and protection for young workers is mainly about schedules, kind of work and payment. Once they reach the legal age, these first-jobs usually get neglected in the same fashion, sometimes with longer hours at work and less payment or social benefits.

It is also true that younger generations are more prone to go to work to newer forms of digital jobs created during the social media boom. If anyone searches lightly will find that these roles are apparently offering big salaries but the sad part is that at this present those positions are being filled by -surprise, surprise- IA assistants.

The future is digital based but not digitally composed, so if government strategies would want a better future for the new generations, they would support the development of digital employment for young people based on a comprehensive and long‑term approach. In particular, it is essential to balance the growing market share of digital platforms and the highly competitive supply side of platform‑based work like the one Social Mining provides.

 

Are we better job candidates if we outsmart AI?

Every economic theory explains what a society is based on how wealth is obtained by their members. The way societies convert resources into value is through work, and without a fair, intelligent and scaled way to organize work, proper development cannot be reached. Rounding up, societies may have a dysfunctional way to adjust this formula and yet will exist and will be poorer -or richer- social groups according to how they deal with work.

Not everyone will handle, like, have skills, access or accept any sort of profession or job. It depends on a myriad of things and there’s a lot to discuss in that regard, but that fact allows a slight-steady distribution of idle hands applied to available work for a group in a confined place. If you add more people to that equation, you’ll get unemployment pockets where some jobs will be on high demand while others are ignored, so employers can choose among the cheapest labor force available for the desired jobs and look the other way when it comes to pick the right personnel, with proper skills, for the most difficult ones.

The Industrial Revolution changed the game when massive production let more candidates to become workers, even from farther places due to faster transportation means. Free market policies ensured some products to top others, so it was necessary to create a better kind of workforce to make more competitive products. That way, the education sector had to step up to teach updated working skills, as it should be doing by now with AI use increasing.

Right after WW2, the number of schools and universities around the world increased at a faster pace than before. It was thought that, through Technical Education, societies would have citizens, making more and having better living standards. As the Academy is not as flexible and stoic as the science it teaches, it didn’t catch up with the economy and society. This template was successful for some years and later became a deceptive machine that created professionals with mediocre knowledge and college debt, with no job prospects to get the money to repay.

It’s important that societies start the conversation today. Not everyone will go to law school and not every lawyer will end living from the practice because that’s part of the natural and social order of things. As a society, we must face the fact that, virtually, AI is already present in courtrooms, law firms and helping attorney assistants. An AI bot cannot become a court judge because of a set of rules and how the judiciary structure works, yet, and Education cannot get stuck on that rail for too long without becoming an obstacle.

 

What will AI not do for you?

This note began on the Hollywood writers' and actors’ strike, and their reasons will extend to many other content creation related areas of work. Will all the affected adapt to these new technologies? Will everyone learn to use them to their own advantage and, most important, is there any advantage at all in AI?  Social media ads make us believe AI is ubiquitous. Everyone can give it a shot, and while we do, AI is learning from your query, or Prompt.

The main illustration for this article (the background, to be more specific) was created by free IA, as it’s acknowledged. As you can see, only the basic shapes could make a resemblance of the discussed topic, not the specifics, but you would be able to get a better one if you feed your prompt with more elements for it to compose a more complete image. It just won’t be perfect, just will do the job.

Does it pose a threat to designers, illustrators and other editorial image professionals? Yes and no, and depends on the outcomes. If any creator settles for less quality, it will be toast in no time.

Now, can it replace your job skills? Not if they are good and human-oriented.

Analytical thinking gives you critical reasoning for complex problem-solving. That’s something you will need for both work and life. If you can think creatively, keeping in mind your goal and context, you are also a basic strategist. You must learn, adapt and be thoughtful on what’s useful to explain things in order to get the best outcome on what you want. And if you can manage stress, be resilient and can collaborate with your group you are building a strong social influence as well.

And no Artificial Intelligence in the World can do anything on this last paragraph for you or anyone else. Those are personality treats and they are all up to you.

Although AI is said to be thought and shaped FOR the users, it is a curve for user’s skills, too. People will feel intimidated, and it will be used for many things, and we must become better workers in our own terms and possibilities.

Maybe the next real question we should ask ourselves is whether AI will bring more fairness or make things worse. Artificial Intelligence is here to stay. It won’t dis-invent itself and won’t be making things easier for you while it evolves. But you’re human, you can evolve, too.

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