Is AI Really Taking our Jobs; or Did We Already Give Them Up?
By Grayson Laird ‘27
ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Grok, the list goes on for what feels like forever as each tech company is racing to make an Artificial Intelligence better than the last, which is great news if you’re part of the millions of people who believe their time is too precious to do mundane tasks and prefer to offload it to this almost omnipotent machine. However, this group also (for the most part) understands how this has repercussions on the environment, decreases job opportunities, yadayadayada, and may feel guilt or maybe this is just the new modern age that we all need to accept. But at what point do we stop blaming one group of people and look at our society as a whole?
Over thousands of years, humans have collectively created a society where we gain a set of skills, then use those skills for what we call a job. Typically those skills are learned in school or job training. Jobs are important for very obvious reasons like we need doctors to help treat patients, we need teachers to educate students, but these reasons start to be incredibly stupid and outdated in a world with ubiquitous Artificial Intelligence and its pervasive influence. In fact, today many young adults entering their careers must heavily consider the risk of AI replacement of their jobs. This is terrifying news for basically anybody in technology as that line of work is at highest risk of being replaced. On the opposite side of the spectrum are jobs requiring well developed emotional intelligence and social skills. Here is where my biggest issue comes in: why have we created a world with careers that are replaceable by a smart computer? And what is the significance and essential quality of replaceable jobs? Are they anti-human? We are subjecting ourselves to a losing battle by living in a fairy land where we believe we can stand against AI and reject it so much that no jobs are changed or lost. It is not that the solution doesn’t exist, but that our previously established notions are built on hope that our society can change so drastically after AI has already been integrated at such a large scale and extent.
It would be in humanity’s greatest interest, instead of fighting against something so powerful, to emphasize the importance of irreplaceable positions that truly and undeniably reach into the crux of what it means to be a human. These jobs have not just existed as a modern career but as a thread of passion running throughout all of time; essential to life and survival. Skills like, aforementioned emotional intelligence, and human relations cannot be replicated by AI, no matter how much people try to make it or claim it so. So rather than futile attempts to remove a parasitic entity, we should bring determination to fuel preexisting paths that most closely align solely with the human experience.
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