
The 100-year report has an explicit demonstration on the transformation brought by the artificial intelligence on the aspect of employment and workspace. However, I doubt that the artificial intelligence will have profound impacts on the working environment based on the current labor market condition and the estimated growth of AI.
For one thing, the article states that rather than replacing tasks, the strategies that AI used was actually to replace tasks. To be specific, it says that many “routine” digital technologies are driven to change the working environment. However, the portion of relatively low-level labor is indeed very high - many workers who did not receive enough education are indeed doing “routine” work. They are the main portion of the workforce which indeed paid for the work that they are doing. Moreover, some people are trained to gain such skills in order to do for a living. However, the introduction of robots into those skill-related factories will indeed break balance of the workforce. Some people claims that the cost for the AI on the labor market will be decreased. But if we think the problem from a global scale, the large labor introduction of labor from China indeed make the human capital a more acceptable resource for the overall working environment. As a result, I do not think that there is a need to build machines to do our tasks.
Moreover, the improvement of AI affects the workforce by “lowering barriers to entry and increasing participation”, thus increasing the pressure of society. The AI’s improvement makes the labor become a less important factor with the passage of time. More emphasis on intellectual capital will lead to the majority of citizens unable to pay for a general standard of living. In fact, the United States has already experienced a fall on population ratio of employment with a growth in overall GDP since 1990s. The article also admits that “Longer term, the current social safety net may need to evolve into better social services for everyone, such as healthcare and education, or a guaranteed basic income”.
On the other hand, AI-based employment will lack interpersonal interaction for the workforce. Imagine that “everyone” is doing their own tasks within settled time, they won’t have the emotional attachment towards their job or career. Although the efficiency is improved, but they lack an incentive to create novelty on their own. The form of hierarchy will presented apparently from the workforce, and unlike human, they won’t try their best to get promoted but instead, they will become old and need updated or even be replaced by others. Moreover, the sense of responsibility will be lost. Imagine a company is earning money for improper goals, all the workers are only completing their tasks without senses of justice to oppose the management level.
Admittedly, certain tasks will be improved including enterprise resource planning, networking, information processing, and search. If we explore more on the tasks that human have a hard time to manage, or to use like searching or storing information, AI will certainly benefit the working environment. But in regards to the current direction of development on AI, which emphasizes more on routine tasks, and the imbalance of labor market, I doubt the realization of AI will in fact benefit the overall labor market.