I just completed a difficult scripted conversation with a plumbing company employee that made me realize that some jobs can and should be replaced by AI. It was enough of a moment that I honestly felt like it was worth a blog. There is more to this moment than this one phone call. I’ve worked with several internet providers over the years and reaching out to them is… difficult. They use phone systems that are not driven by sophisticated technology and designed solely to route me away from the human help I actually need. I need the human help because whenever I call one of these systems I am trying to deal with a nuanced problem. AI, from my understanding of the level of technology in its present state, is not very good at nuance in that respect. However, transcribing my information into a system in order to get a truck out to my house to look at a problem should not take a 10 minute phone call. I could hear her typing in the information as we spoke. I could hear in the pauses and the variety of tap pressure and speed when she got hung up on something and or needed to read from a prompt. It was as if she was working for the computer and, because I called, it needed her voice to talk to me. They have programs for that too now.
The more I consider the role of AI in jobs the more I find myself asking two fundamentally different questions. The first isn’t even about AI itself. The question is instead about people. Do we create jobs in order to hire people who do not have the skills or intelligence to find other more heightened forms of employment? I mean who actually needs someone to hold a sign on a corner and maybe spin it a few times to direct you towards a particular business. Real Estate people do that pop up work with A-frames. Likewise, are we still at a space where we need a room full of booking agents (yes, I heard other people in the background doing the same dang thing) transcribing data into a system that can better speak for itself?
The second question is about the technology. What level of nuance and understanding is required to carry out the role of a booker or of someone of other administrative functionality? What is needed of a teacher? Both of these are roles AI is being used to replace to some capacity. So, what does it say aout those roles and what we need from those roles vs. what AI is capable of offering?