AI and the Future of Work

AI is NOT Taking my job

AI is not taking my job.

It will take some of my tasks. And I’m okay with that.

The International AI safety report was just released. The chair of the massive team behind the report is Yoshua Bengio, one of the most significant researchers in the field. He is frequently cited in conversations about the risks of AI.

The report suggests that AI can automate tasks, but impact on jobs is not yet definitive. For many people currently impacted by layoffs that may be hard to swallow. The caveat here is that there seems to be a noticeable decline in opportunities for employment for junior positions while more senior positions are stable or growing.

This reminds me of a recent podcast episode from A16Z with Marc Andreesen. He suggested paying attention to the impact of AI on tasks instead of just the elimination of jobs full stop.

So what about the role of educators? Can AI replace teachers?

These are rather fuzzy labels. In the context of HigherEd, I perform several roles and each role requires several tasks.

The dissemination of information is certainly a central role. And LLMs can certainly do this task.

Helping students to understand that information is another role I perform. And AI has certainly helped me understand a range of subjects over the past few years.

Assessing learning is one of my tasks. I’ve been able to create assessment tools with LLMs. And they have been effective for evaluating my learning. So, another task that AI can ‘do’.

I believe my role as an educator is to be a steward of communities of learning. It’s not just to ‘disseminate and evaluate’. It’s to be part of a society oriented towards the development of knowledge, skill, understanding, and ability; the building of character; and the forming of social bonds.

As an educator I am responsible for that community.

My words and actions contribute to its fabric.

For people who see the role of an educator narrowly, who see it as limited to pushing updates to repositories (dissemination aka lectures) and making pull requests (evaluation aka exams) then AI is certainly a threat.

But I do not see my role so myopically.

And that means I have optimism for the future.

AI is not replacing me. Not yet.

What do you think about your job?