On employment, don’t panic – yet.
Things will get wild, but probably not immediately
“Overall impact on productivity and return on AI investment has so far been modest. Every company is investing in AI, but so far most aren’t getting huge returns.
All this could change; probably someday it will—but most likely not until we see more radical advances in AI, which could be a decade or more away. In the meantime, the advice is simple: Don’t focus on replacing humans. Focus on how you can use AI to help the ones you’ve got.”
In support of this, I give nine arguments; here are few:
You can read the rest at Fortune.
There is a parallel lesson for employees, of course. Don’t panic, at least not yet.
The biggest danger to employees is that their employers believe the hype and fire them.
Klarna has already been through this full cycle of believing the hype, firing hundreds of support staff, watching customer satisfaction go off the cliff, hiring back hundreds of people… one of the little-recognized benefits of the speed of AI business is that we’re getting to witness the entire Gartner Hype Cycle in the space of months, not decades.
Seems like the scarier option is that AI will displace some workers in the inevitable enshitification schemes and the quality and safety of most everything will just degrade in a race to the bottom.