How is artificial intelligence affecting job searches?

Artificial intelligence programs like ChatGPT use AI to do thinking or writing or creating for you. Pretty amazing, but also a little terrifying. What happens to the people who used to do those jobs?

Olivia Fair graduated four years ago. "I've applied to probably over a hundred jobs in the past, I don't know, six months," she said. "And yeah, none of them are landing."

She's had a series of short-term jobs - one was in TV production, transcribing interviews. "But now they don't have a bunch of people transcribing," she said. "They have maybe one person overseeing all of that, and AI doing the rest. Which I think is true for a lot of entry-level positions. And it can be a very useful tool for those people doing that work. But then there's less people needed."

According to Laura Ullrich, director of economic research at Indeed, the job-listings website, job postings have declined year over year by 6.7 percent. "This is a tough year," she said. "Younger job seekers, specifically those who are recent grads, are having a harder time finding work."

Asked if there is a correlation between the rise in AI and the decline in jobs for recent graduates, Ullrich said, "I think there is a cause-and-effect, but it's maybe not as significant as a lot of people would think. If you look specifically at tech jobs, job postings are down 36% compared to pre-pandemic numbers. But that decline started happening prior to AI becoming commonly used."

Ullrich said in 2021-22, as the effects of the COVID pandemic began to ebb, there was a hiring boom in some sectors, including tech: "Quite frankly, I think some companies overhired," she said.

The uncertain national situation (tariffs, taxes, foreign policy) doesn't help, either. Ullrich said, "Some other people have used the analogy of, like, driving through fog. If it's foggy, you slow down a bit. But if it's really foggy, you pull over. And unfortunately, some companies have pulled over to sit and wait to see what is gonna happen."

That sounds a little more nuanced than some recent headlines, which make it pretty clear that AI is taking jobs:

"I read today an interview with a guy who said, you know, 'By 2027, we will be jobless, lonely, crime on the streets,'" said David Autor, a labor economist at MIT. "And I said, 'How do I take the other side of that bet?' 'Cause that's just not true. I'm sure of that. My view is, look, there is great potential and great risk. I think that it's not nearly as imminent on either direction as most people think."

I said, "But what it does seem to do is relieve the newcomers, the beginning, incoming novices we don't need anymore."

"This is really a concern," Autor said. "Judgment, expertise, it's acquired slowly. It's a product of immersion, right? You know, how do I care for this patient, or land this plane, or remodel this building? And it's possible that we could strip out so much of the supporting work, that people never get the expertise. I don't think it's an insurmountable concern. But we shouldn't take for granted that it will solve itself."

Let's cut to the chase. What are the jobs we're going to lose? Laura Ullrich said, "We analyzed 2,800 specific skills, and 30% of them could be, at least partially, done by AI." (Which means, 70% of job skills are not currently at risk of AI.)

So, which jobs will AI be likely to take first? Most of it is jobs in front of a screen:

• Coding
• Accounting
• Copy writing
• Translation
• Customer service
• Paralegal work
• Illustration
• Graphic design
• Songwriting
• Information management

As David Autor puts it: "What will market demand be for this thing? How much should we order? How much should we keep in stock?"

AI will have a much harder time taking jobs requiring empathy, creative thinking, or physicality:

• Healthcare
• Teaching
• Social assistance
• Mental health
• Police and fire
• Engineering
• Construction
• Wind and solar
• Tourism
• Trades (like plumbing and electrical)

And don't forget about the new job categories that AI will create. According to Autor, "A lot of the work that we do is in things that we just didn't do, you know, 50 or 100 years ago - all this work in solar and wind generation, all types of medical specialties that were unthinkable."

I asked, "You can't sit here and tell me what the new fields and jobs will be?"

"No. We're bad at predicting where new work will appear, what skills it will need, how much there will be," Autor said, adding, "There will be new things, absolutely."

"So, it sounds like you don't think we are headed to becoming a nation of people who cannot find any work, who spend the day on the couch watching Netflix?"

Autor said, "No, I don't see that. Of course, people will be displaced, certain types of occupations will disappear. People will lose careers. That's going to happen. But we might actually get much better at medicine. We might figure out a way to generate energy more cheaply and with less pollution. We might figure out a better way to do agriculture that isn't land-intensive and so ecologically intensive."

Whatever is going to happen, will likely take a while to happen. The latest headlines look like these:

Until then, Laura Ullrich has some advice for young job seekers: "The number one piece of advice I would give is, move forward. So, whether that is getting another job, getting a part-time job, finding a post-graduate internship - reach out to the professors that you had. They have a whole network of former students, right? Reach out to other alumni who graduated from the school you went to, or majored in the same thing you majored in. It might be what gets you a job this year."

So far, Olivia Fair is doing all of the above. I asked her, "You're interested in creativity and writing and production. So let me hear, as a human, your pitch, why you'd be better than AI doing those jobs?"

"Okay," Fair replied. "Hmm. I'm a person, and not a robot?"

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Story produced by Gabriel Falcon. Editor: Chad Cardin.

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