TwiddleLab / Artificial Intelligence / AI and Us: Using AI Well
Jobs and the Future
What you will learn
- A job is a bundle of tasks. AI usually takes over some tasks, not whole jobs.
- Automation: AI does the task. Augmentation: AI helps a person do it faster or better.
- Freed time often goes to the human parts: judgment, care, trust, hard cases. Those skills grow in value.
- Forecasts about jobs disagree a lot. Look at tasks, not headlines.
How the lesson goes
In 2016 a famous AI scientist said we should stop training radiologists. What happened next?
Radiologists are doctors who read X-rays and scans. Tap the line you'd bet on, then Check.
Why didn't the job vanish? Take a radiologist's week apart.
Drag each task into a lane.
Some radiology tasks really are done by AI now. But the job is many tasks, and most of them need a person who checks, decides and talks. That's why the job grew instead of vanishing.
Now speed up the AI tasks. Where does the time go?
Slide how much faster AI makes its tasks. Check when human tasks take at least 60% of the week.
When AI makes some tasks faster, the hours don't disappear: they move to the tasks only people do. This toy assumes the freed time is reused. In real jobs it can also mean more patients, or fewer staff.
Two words for what you just saw.
Task vs job: a job is a bundle of tasks. AI changes some tasks. Whether a job shrinks, grows or changes depends on the whole bundle.
Automation: AI does a task on its own. Augmentation: AI helps a person do it faster or better.
Most jobs get a mix of both, so the human parts become a bigger share of the work.
When AI writes first drafts, which 3 skills get more valuable?
Tap three, then Check.
When drafts are cheap, the value moves to deciding what to ask, judging the result, and working with people.
Math: a 40-hour week. AI halves the time for three tasks that take 10, 8 and 6 hours.
Drag the marker to the percent of the week that's freed, then Check.
(10 + 8 + 6) / 2 = 12 hours saved, and 12 / 40 = 0.3 = 30%. Halving some tasks never halves the whole job.
Job remix: pick a job and sort its tasks against the clock.
Six tasks, 30 seconds. Get 5 right.
One report says AI will replace 40% of jobs. Another says it will create more jobs than it removes. Why can both exist?
"Tasks AI could do" sounds like "jobs lost", but it isn't. Jobs also change, grow, or new ones appear. When you read a forecast, ask: what exactly did they count?
Your job, 2035. Tap the tasks you'd keep for yourself.
Then Check to make your card.
Previous lesson: Prompting as Clear Thinking · Next lesson: Safety and Alignment · Part of the course: AI and Us: Using AI Well
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