#47: New Types of Jobs, Work in the Digital Era

Ian Bowie
Hello, and welcome to AI unfiltered with me Ian Bowie, and our resident expert, Michael Stormbom, where we will be talking about everything to do with AI in our modern digital society and what the future holds for all of us.

Ian Bowie
Well, I mean, that article that we both read was talking about over 38 million new jobs being created because of AI. The sad thing is it didn’t actually specify what kind of jobs.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, and I think that’s part of the… now that we live in this era of the so called gig economy, as well. So there’s a particular type of job that AI has created that’s called click work. Yeah. And it’s exactly as interesting as it sounds, which is basically to just validate data for the for the algorithms. So if you ever gone on a website, and it comes up this is this will prove you’re not a robot by clicking on all the all the squares with a traffic light. And you’re actually helping out these computer vision algorithms there in the background by creating training material for them.

Ian Bowie
Is that right? Yeah. Cheeky.

Michael Stormbom
Very cheeky. But yeah, there are these crowdsourcing thing where you… for example, Amazon has Mechanical Turk, where you can outsource data creation and data validation and then people simply go and validate the data for however many cents you get for it, not much.

Ian Bowie
Right? So we’re not exactly talking about high value jobs or highly paid jobs here are we.

Michael Stormbom
No so not everyone can be a data scientist or an engineer. So it’s just the manual labor of validating the data.

Ian Bowie
You see, this is something that crossed my mind when I read that 38 million jobs and I suddenly thought about it and thought, well, you know, what kind of jobs is, there’s a possible danger that all it’s going to do is create a massive low value, low paid work.

Michael Stormbom
For sure, for sure. So I think there’s a great risk of that. So AI is able to create 30 million new jobs, it says, but it didn’t specify how many jobs it will make obsolete either did it. It will create 30 million new jobs, but AI will take away a billion No, no, but I don’t know. But…

Ian Bowie
No, it’s not necessarily that but I mean, let’s imagine that it takes away and it creates an equal number of jobs, but it takes away currently high value high paid jobs.

Michael Stormbom
And replace them with gig economy stuff.

Ian Bowie
Yeah. And that’s a danger. It’s like when the British government say that you know, since since the you know, pandemic, suddenly, you know, 2 million new jobs have been created. What they fail to mention is what those jobs are, you know, these, these are minimum wage, zero hour contract jobs. Yeah, that’s just rubbish, isn’t it? It’s crap. It’s misleading.

Michael Stormbom
Very much so. So focusing on the raw numbers of job creation as opposed to quality. Yeah, yeah.

Ian Bowie
Yeah. And I think you know, that’s potentially the danger. We keep talking about social divisions. I think we’re also going to end up with…

Michael Stormbom
I think AI can end up exacerbating those divisions.

Ian Bowie
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Because like you say, you know, not everybody can be a data scientist. And this is what’s gonna happen. You’re gonna get people who understand AI, can work with AI, and use AI for their own means. Yeah. Then you’re gonna get this massive pool. Who are basically victims of AI?

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, in a way. Yeah.

Ian Bowie
So that they’re the fodder for AI. The material? Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, we think about companies like Amazon, I think they’re a huge user of AI. Yeah. And then they you know, they talk about oh, and Amazon warehouses opened up near you and created 400 new jobs. But you gotta look at the quality of those new jobs. And even those pick-and-pack jobs, they’re gonna go I mean, I don’t even understand why Amazon warehouses aren’t fully automated already.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, they’re gonna be eventually for sure.

Ian Bowie
You would have thought so yeah. There seem to be a long way from it when you when you hear about how many people are employed in Amazon warehouses. And you know that Amazon is a massive user of AI, certainly for pushing stuff at consumers. I mean, you would have thought that pick and pack AI in a warehouse is pretty simple stuff. Compared to…

Michael Stormbom
Well, simple and simple, But yeah, but ya know, I mean, I guess once it’s more profitable to just use the machines as opposed to human workers then that will certainly happen.

Ian Bowie
And yeah, I suppose there’s a cost of actually introducing the infrastructure, which won’t be cheap.

Michael Stormbom
There’s that and does it provide enough savings to justify that? Yeah, yeah.

Ian Bowie
So as long as people are cheaper than machines then they’re safe.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, yeah. To keep on painting this rather dystopian picture of the future that we…

Ian Bowie
Well, yeah, no, but I mean, you know, you’ve got to be realistic, you know? That Okay. We’ve we’ve created 500 new jobs, but yes, but hey, come on, you know, minimum wage.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, feeding data into the machine. Yeah, absolutely.

Ian Bowie
You know, this is not positive stuff. No, definitely not. No. So it’s always about reading between the lines isn’t it? It’s always about reading beyond the data. Yeah. And, well, everything in life is a double edged sword.

Michael Stormbom
Very much so.

Ian Bowie
and you know, I mean, I, I certainly don’t want to sort of paint a dystopian reality future for people. But, you know, a lot of what I see is simply a very small number of people benefiting and a much, much larger number of people, becoming the victims of technologies.

Michael Stormbom
No, I agree. So..

Ian Bowie
There was a thing that I read this morning, actually, the UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, apparently now would like to introduce legislation that forces kids to continue with mathematics until the age of 18. I was sort of thinking why, I hated maths. I was happy to kiss it goodbye at the age of 16.

Michael Stormbom
That’s a little bit like teaching coding as a language, or comparing teaching coding to language learning. Not everyone has the aptitude or interest for it. Not everyone can be a programmer.

Ian Bowie
And also, I’m sorry to say but in my opinion, maths is not the be all and end all of everything.

Michael Stormbom
No, certainly not. No.

Ian Bowie
You know, the there’s a place for many different disciplines in the world and you know, I think social skills, interpersonal skills, communication skills are of equal importance.

Michael Stormbom
Definitely. And this focus, on, let’s call them the hard sciences. I mean, that’s at the expense of, well, liberal arts, for example, which…

Ian Bowie
That’s right, yeah, and you know, at the end of the day, if I can make a lot of money from my creative ideas, and it suddenly needs somebody with higher mathematical skills, I’ll go and find somebody.

Michael Stormbom
Or, there are even AIs that can solve..,

Ian Bowie
Yeah, that’s right. So I don’t think I need to be a mathematician personally. And besides, my brain doesn’t work like that.

Michael Stormbom
I mean, I don’t think we can all be Fields prize winning, or Fields medal, winning mathematicians. No.

Ian Bowie
You know, there’s been a lot of talk about work life balance. And that actually now, it’s perhaps about less productivity.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, but it’s not so much about productivity. It’s about time spent at work, which is a separate thing, I think. Because I mean, they’ve done so many, any number of studies that, actually, spending less time at work let’s say, six hours rather than 7.5? You might be more productive during those six hours. Absolutely. So I mean, I think too many people get the idea that the more you work in terms of just hours spent on it, the more the more you get done, but that’s not necessarily the case at all.

Ian Bowie
Well, I think they’ve proven that’s not the case. As now, they have shown quite clearly in many companies results, that allowing people to actually work – of course they weren’t allowed, there was no choice, but having people working from home. They are actually far more productive than they are if they have to come into an office. And yet, companies are going back to the office model.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, it’s rather interesting because I thought it would, I thought it would be just be more of these hybrid work and remote work, but quite a lot seems to be just coming back to office after all.

Ian Bowie
And companies are demanding it from employees. And yet the results over the last two years show quite clearly that employees are happier at home. They’re more productive at home. Profitability in many companies is up.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. Eases up the logistics in many cases for sure. And avoiding hours of commute. Yeah, for sure.

Ian Bowie
So it’s very strange.

Michael Stormbom
It is yeah. I don’t know. Maybe there’s just some sort of preconceived notion of how the world is supposed to work. And we just go back to back to the status quo ante.

Ian Bowie
Well, I think there’s a big trust thing.

Michael Stormbom
There is that. Yeah.

Ian Bowie
But then you would have thought after two years, people have proved that they can be trusted to do the job.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, for sure. For sure.

Ian Bowie
Still, they want to go back to this sort of archaic office model. Yeah, I just don’t understand it.

Michael Stormbom
But the point was that productivity is not the same as hours spent at work.

Ian Bowie
No. No, that’s true.

Michael Stormbom
You could probably use AI to model that as well to find the optimal, optimal amount of work time.

Ian Bowie
I think they do that, don’t they, for example, these call centers and that they have some kind of monitoring system to make sure that employees are doing what they’re supposed to do. Yeah. Has that got any.. is that AI enabled?

Michael Stormbom
Well, I guess it’s data driven, at least if they have the data. But I mean, I think it would be quite interesting, I mean there’s been this talk about the 30 hour workweek and so forth, here in Finland to have some more data on.

Ian Bowie
But actually, if you think about for example, if you would have some kind of AI facial recognition system, watching people who work at computer terminals, could it be used to…

Michael Stormbom
I actually know a company, you can buy freelance workers from there, so the way it works, is that then you have to install some application in your computer, and then it’ll randomly activate your camera to make sure that you’re actually at the computer working.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, I wasn’t sort of thinking about that. I was thinking more about can it detect if somebody is alert, engaged, creative, productive, or if they’re kind of like, they’re typing away, but they’re really not engaged and focused.

Michael Stormbom
They did add feature to that, that meeting application, where… but I think what it does is just check whether your eyes are focusing on the screen. Yeah. Yeah. So I don’t know if you could take it to the next level and to see if they’re looking at the person’s facial expression. Are they really, are they really engaged in anything?

Ian Bowie
Yeah, because I don’t even think just monitoring if somebody’s looking at the screen gives a particularly accurate idea of whether they’re engaged and I mean, somebody can be engaged by literally looking at the ceiling with their eyes closed, because they’re listening and they’re thinking,

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, and if you’re doing thinking work then how do you measure that? Today, I spent three hours thinking about this problem.

Ian Bowie
In the back garden,

Michael Stormbom
In the back garden, yeah.

Ian Bowie
With a sangria. Yeah, yeah.

Michael Stormbom
And then finally it took me five minutes to record the thing which I figured out what to do here. Why not?

Ian Bowie
Yeah, there’s a long way to go, I think for a lot of companies.

Michael Stormbom
But it’s a lot about it’s all about trust, for sure. Just trusting your employees and why? Why the hell would you hire a person if you don’t trust the person?

Ian Bowie
Surely you can see you can see that on the bottom line, can’t you you know, I mean, after one year, or even quarterly, you can see if it’s working or not, because you can see the financial results. Or do you think do you think it’s a case of there are still too many older managers at work?

Michael Stormbom
I think there’s definitely some sort of generational aspect to it. So if you remember the old management by perkele here in Finland. Yeah. And yeah, I would definitely say there’s that aspect as well.

Ian Bowie
So when when those managers retire, the next generation might be a little bit more flexible and open.

Michael Stormbom
Concievably. Yeah. Or not if they’ve grown up in a culture where they also learn to do it the bad way.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, so it’s going to take a long time before we really see new ways of working across the board.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. I reckon so. I mean, certainly, when the pandemic hit, I suppose people thought it would change more quickly, but… Because we had to change it overnight, in a manner of speaking.

Ian Bowie
Yeah. Well, we did. Yeah, we had to adapt quite quickly.

Michael Stormbom
But that is definitely sort of going going backwards in that sense. Yeah. But on the other hand, I think because you do lose something if you’re not, if you don’t have the physical presence. I don’t mean in the sense of, I need to see what this person is doing at all times. But rather just that, you know, having a chat by the by the coffee maker, that sort of that sort of thing. And those are types of interactions, which don’t really happen very organically if you sit at home.

Ian Bowie
Well, no, no, they won’t, but although…

Michael Stormbom
I mean, all the nonverbal, nonverbal communication that we really can’t have over Teams, for example.

Ian Bowie
Yeah. Well, no, I mean, that that is true, but I don’t think it needs to happen five days a week.

Michael Stormbom
No, definitely not. On occasion it would be good.

Ian Bowie
Yes. I mean, that’s what some companies are insisting on. You know, it’s all over. We want you back in the office. Why? Once a week, once a fortnight even.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, I think that would be perfectly sufficient. Really? Yeah. Yeah.

Ian Bowie
No, it’s always struck me as a bit odd. This insistence of being….

Michael Stormbom
To go back to exactly the way things were prior to corona. But why? Yeah, indeed.

Ian Bowie
I don’t think anybody’s really thought it through, have they.

Michael Stormbom
No, we had to return as quickly as possible to the status quo ante.

Ian Bowie
Maybe it’s a safety thing. Yeah.

Michael Stormbom
Well, I think quite a lot of companies are still stuck in the nine to five mindset. Yeah, even though there isn’t necessarily any need for nine to five.

Ian Bowie
Perhaps those companies are going to die.

Michael Stormbom
So then we could discuss how image generators like Dali and so forth, how they how they might impact the work of the future. So for example, when it comes to creating prompts to instruct them to generate images, for example.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, yeah. That’s gonna actually require a completely different set of skills to being a visual artist, for sure. You know, that you can draw a portrait, but then to be able to instruct an algorithm to do the same thing is a very, very different kind of mindset and way of seeing the world.

Michael Stormbom
Very, very much so.

Ian Bowie
Isn’t it? Yeah, yeah.

Michael Stormbom
And it involves a lot trial and error, just finding what what sort of prompts produce what sort of results?

Ian Bowie
So perhaps that’s going to be a whole new subject area in schools.

Michael Stormbom
Prompt engineering? Yeah.

Ian Bowie
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Why not?

Michael Stormbom
I want to be a prompt engineer. And that’s I’m gonna put that on my business card.

Ian Bowie
But yeah, why not? Because actually, if you think about it, if you if you’re good at it, you’re probably going to be in demand. Well, imagine you know, advertising agencies who need images, companies that need images, all kinds of places that need images.

Michael Stormbom
I mean, there are literally already websites where you can purchase prompts.

Ian Bowie
Really?

Michael Stormbom
Yes. So you can go there and you’re looking for a specific type of prompts, and then you, I don’t know how much you pay for a prompt, but, I don’t know, some cents, I would imagine. But yeah, then you can buy the prompt and then you can use it to..

Ian Bowie
No way, absolutely unbeliecable. What a way to make a living.

Michael Stormbom
So yeah, I mean, speaking of new types of jobs, I think types of jobs. That’s definitely…

Ian Bowie
That’s going to be there. Wow

Michael Stormbom
I mean, it’s just a different form of creativity.

Ian Bowie
But then of course, some really clever person is going to come along and create another algorithm that creates prompts for DALL-E. Why wouldn’t you.

Michael Stormbom
You could possibly already do that with GPT3, the text generation algorithm. Yeah. So just in tons of… we have to give it a try, create the prompt for DALL-E and then it will do it, hopefully.

Ian Bowie
You have to be a little bit more detailed than that.

Michael Stormbom
Well, yes. Yeah. And probably it’s a good idea to feed it already existing prompts.

Ian Bowie
Yes. But that will be quite funny. Yeah. Actually, what you could do is you could feed it all the prompts that you have used to create all the pictures on our website. Yeah, and and then yeah, then create new prompts. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That’d be quite funny. Yeah. Yeah, that actually sounds. That sounds like a nice little project.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. So now we don’t even need to think about the images.

Ian Bowie
You’ve been listening to me Ian Bowie and my colleague Michael Stormbom, on AI Unfiltered, and for more episodes, please go to aiunfiltered.com Thank you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai