Will AI Take Your Job?

The Great Workforce Leveling

The world is abuzz with opinions about the implications of AI on the workforce. In a recent article by Matt Turner published in Business Insider, the question is raised once again.

The article title claims “the mediocre middle of office workers” will be replaced. But, as the argument progresses, there’s plenty of opinion on both sides of the fence. The essential claims are 1. AI will replace mediocre workers, those still learning their trade or just getting started because AI can outperform them, and 2. Since AI learns from the best of the best, an otherwise mediocre worker can up their performance by leveraging AI, thus competing with the experts.

The most rock-solid claim in the article comes at the end in a quote from Richard Baldwin, “AI won’t take your job. It’s somebody using AI that will take your job.” This part is certain. But what does all of this debate boil down to for the workforce of tomorrow?

To answer this we should assess it from two points of view: that of a company and that of a person in the workforce.

From a company perspective, all but the most benevolent of them will make decisions from a purely monetary standpoint. If a person with less experience and training can perform the same job as a more skilled person, but the company can…