A rising percentage of workers believe that A.I. and other cutting-edge technologies could render their current jobs obsolete, according to new polling by Gallup. Should you be worried about your own job?
Back in 2017, Gallup found only 13 percent of workers concerned about technological obsolescence. That number stayed relatively steady for a few years before jumping seven points between 2021 and 2022.
“The recent rise in people’s concern about their job becoming obsolete is owing almost entirely to college-educated workers, among whom the percentage worried has jumped from 8 percent to 20 percent,” Gallup’s report added. “At the same time, worry among workers without a college degree is virtually unchanged at 24 percent. As a result, whereas non-college-educated workers were previously much more concerned about technological replacement than college-educated workers, these groups now express similar levels of concern.”
Many of those college-educated respondents are knowledge workers whose jobs are potentially vulnerable to a new generation of chatbots such as ChatGPT, which can produce code, text, and even images in response to a simple prompt. “Developments in computers’ ability to mimic human language, recently made clear with the release of ChatGPT last November, may be changing the stereotype of what computers can do in the workplace,” the report concluded. “It is no longer only about robots standing in for humans in warehouses and on assembly lines but has expanded to online programs conducting sophisticated language-based work, including writing computer code.”
If you’re a tech pro worried about your future in this emerging age of A.I., take heart: numerous pundits and analysts suspect that A.I. will eliminate some jobs, yes, but also create more—including ones with high six-figure or even seven-figure salaries. The trick is to understand how A.I. and machine learning work, and then consider how to utilize these technologies in ways that make you more effective in your current role.
During a recent episode of ‘Tech Connects,’ Nick Durkin, field CTO of harness.io (where he’s responsible for the organization's worldwide field engineering team, post-sales engineering team, and a portion of product), described why current advances in A.I. might make your job even more fun than it is today, mostly by eliminating many rote tasks. Check it out:
Of course, to fully leverage A.I., you have to learn its components (and master some tools). A new report from consulting firm McKinsey, Technology Trends Outlook 2023, breaks down A.I. into the following concepts:
For many in tech, A.I., machine learning, and other cutting-edge technologies are powering tools such as low- and no-code platforms, infrastructure-as-code, and advanced microservices. Understanding how these tools work is key to figuring out how your workflow could evolve—and they could also free up your time to pursue the more creative aspects of your job.
