A.I. and the End of Work

Why our kids need to think more about who, and not what, they want to be

When we were kids, probably the most common question grown-ups asked us was, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” And back then there was no shortage of seemingly fixed and available options: doctor, lawyer, teacher, businessman, etc. They felt like stable social categories that had always been part of the fabric of human society, and always would be.

Except they weren’t, and they aren’t. Already A.I. can diagnose early stage cancer better than trained radiologists, and can perform document review in complex litigation faster and more accurately than licensed attorneys. Bill Gates thinks A.I. will replace most human vocations within 10 years. Personalized A.I. tutors and virtual classrooms were once the stuff of science fiction stories by Neal Stephenson or Chen Qiufan. But it’s easy to imagine their becoming reality in just a few years’ time.

As a student of history, I’m well aware that abrupt technological changes have always wrought havoc on labor markets, displacing workers and sometimes even eliminating entire industries. And of course those changes had cultural and political ramifications, too. But at the end of the day, they also tended to create more new industries and employment opportunities than they destroyed.

A.I. may be different, though. Back in 2013, President Obama encouraged young people to learn how to code. “Learning these skills isn’t just important for your future, it’s important for our country’s future,” he said. Twelve years later, he thinks A.I. is better than 60 to 70 percent of human coders.

We’re talking highly skilled jobs that pay really good salaries and that up until recently has been entirely a seller’s market in Silicon Valley. A lot of that work is going to go away. The best coders will be able to use these tools to augment what they already do, but for a lot of routine stuff you just won’t need a coder because the computer or the machine will do it itself. That’s going to duplicate itself across professions.

Obama’s been taking a lot of flack for this about face, but it’s hard to argue that he was wrong then or that he’s wrong now. That’s just how fast the technology has evolved. In fact it may be even worse than that. Only two years ago, “prompt engineer” was the hot new job title, commanding a six figure salary. But today A.I. tools are so much more user friendly that everyone can basically become a prompt engineer, and increasingly has to.

In other words, A.I. is creating new jobs, but it’s also either filling those jobs itself or rendering them obsolete by its own exponential development.

I have a son who says he wants to be an aeronautical engineer. I think it’s great that he’s so into science and technology. But I also wonder: in 10 years when he’s graduating from college, will humans still have anything to do with designing spacecraft or plotting their trajectories? How do we talk to our kids about what they want to be, when we have no clue which of today’s professions, if any, will still exist by the time they’re grown?