If 100 million jobs (maybe more) created by AI isn’t good enough for you, then it might be a good idea to either (a) learn from history and rethink this matter or (b) quit reading this column right here and suffer the consequences of those who say “Don’t confuse me with the facts; my mind’s made up.”
Millions of jobs
That 100 million number is an extrapolation. The World Economic Forum predicts that AI will create 78 million jobs, even after job losses are factored in. So, working the math and going with aggregated and widely-accepted estimations that for every job killed by AI three or four will be created, we come to this: 78 million is the WEF’s net number, bringing us to 100 million or more, gross.
But what will those jobs be?
Surely, AI is still so new, so big, and so sweeping, that we don’t know what many of those jobs will be, but we do know they’re coming, which tells us that readiness is more important than expertise, Better ready for what’s coming than good at what will pass.
History is our witness
It was that way when the cotton gin and the reaper changed agriculture in the 1790s, when fossil oil replaced whale oil to light our homes and streets in the 1860s, when automobiles replaced buggies and carriages in the 1890s, and when personal computers replaced all sorts of equipment in the 1980s. In every case, the playout was the same. Yes, individual jobs disappeared, but in the aggregate, vast amounts of new jobs – and industries – were created. And it will be no different with AI, just bigger. Much bigger.
Trainers, Explainers, Sustainers
In January 2024, I reported that the WEF laid down what would prove to be an excellent framework for what AI jobs would look like. Said the WEF: Let’s start thinking about “trainers, explainers, sustainers.”
Trainers
Trainers, says the WEF, “are the people developing AI: engineers and scientists working on the large language models (LLMs) on which generative AI tools such as ChatGPT depend.” Of note, development in AI is in the hands of more than just programmers; demand engineers, predicts the WEF’s Jobs of Tomorrow 2024 report. That fits in nicely with the CHIPS and Science Act that will begin growing America’s chip producing capacity. Other “trainer” jobs AI could create include systems administrators who are building server infrastructure. The list has just begun.
Explainers
While trainers are working behind the scenes, explainers will interact with end users, helping them understand and use AI. Explainers will design interfaces to enable smooth and seamless interaction with AI, and can be thought of as “user experience (UX) designers, says the Forum.
Further, explainers could be tasked with making LLMs work with different kinds of user inputs: typed commands or spoken voice, for instance.
Sustainers
Sustainers will ensure that AI systems are used in the best way possible, a nebulous phrase until you break it down to its three functions. (1) Content creators will exercise prompt engineering, a new discipline that involves writing text prompts to make an LLM produce the content a user wants. (2) Data curators will be tasked with making sure LLMs have the best data going into them. “Data quality and integrity checks are critical, and will lead to the development of its own specialized workforce,” according to the Jobs of Tomorrow report. (3) Ethics and governance specialists will have the awesome responsibility of making sure LLMs do not act in biased, harmful, or unethical ways, and will be hard at work testing before anything is released to the public. This could lead to the rise of AI safety and regulatory officers and ethicists.
And beyond…
Generalizations can be either good or bad, useful or useless. What we got from the WEF in January 2024 – when reassessed today – prove out nicely, giving us strong guidance for the decisions we have no choice but to make.