How could we be so lucky? The possibilities that bloom from our fingertips would have shocked people twenty years ago. “We just thought it was great that we had Google,” said former journalist Margo DeAngelo. Now we have more. Much, much more. An entire essay written in seconds. An infinite array of images spawned out of seemingly thin air. And the best part: knowledge. There was always more, always a question, something to keep everybody wondering. We became ok with not knowing. Now, we want to know everything, and it is easy to get there fast.
Limitless worlds exist on the internet; multiple communities of people combining their knowledge into a greater pool of information. The possibilities fill many with hope and excitement. We have the potential to learn almost anything, gain expertise, to become things we’ve only dreamed of, to lessen some of the grueling tasks of our workload onto the back of the thing that doesn’t feel it: Artificial Intelligence, or AI.
To know about its effects, first we have to understand what AI means. What is AI? Britannica.com states that it is “the ability of a digital computer or computer-controlled robot to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings. The term is frequently applied to the project of developing systems endowed with the intellectual processes characteristic of humans, such as the ability to reason, discover meaning, generalize, or learn from past experience.” In other words, it can learn from the data it is given, enabling it to do tasks such as summarizing and image generation. In recent years, the use of AI has started to pick up speed. Now, people of all age groups use it to help them with work, school, and daily tasks.
The craze of AI in recent years has led people to overuse it at the expense of people and their jobs. AI was first designed to help people perform better, cutting out time-consuming tasks such as spell checking or summarizing, freeing up time for people to use higher level skills. Now, it’s being used to replace humans entirely.
“It started to feel like I was the robot,” an anonymous writer and editor (dubbed “Miller”) remarked about his job after the switch to new technology had drastically altered it. The workplace that he once thrived in was gone, incomparable to its former self, says bbc.com.
Not long ago, he had worked side-by-side with a team of writers and editors. His work was never dull, his office always overflowing with creativity and ideas for articles that the team bounced off one another. This all changed one day, when his manager informed him of a new system that would be taking effect. Instead of having a human-based workplace, the company would revert to AI to reduce costs.
Instead of staff generating ideas, an AI outline for an article would be produced based on titles that the manager wrote out. Then, an article would be written using the outline as its foundation. The writer and editor’s task was to simply go through the articles one final time to ensure them to be free of mistakes, and to make them sound more human.
His job became much less interactive and more isolated. Miller and his team no longer worked collectively to produce organically thought out articles. The field he joined began to change for the worse. Miller’s only job now was to check the articles over and edit out simple mistakes before they were published.
By the time 2024 rolled around, the company lost the need for the rest of Miller’s team of a few dozen workers. The company laid them all off except for him. Miller was forced to work alone. “All of a sudden, I was just doing everyone’s job… the real problem was it was just so repetitive and boring,” the editor said about his new position.
By incorporating more technological advancements into the workforce, we are beginning to cross the line from technology being helpful to it being detrimental. This issue seems to touch upon almost everyone’s lives, and could affect even more people in the future. Students, teachers, office workers, and cashiers alike all face AI on a day to day basis.
Bethany, a 9th grader at the NYC iSchool, says that many students “might use it (AI) for schoolwork” in order to get answers, or to use it for their work for “finding ideas,” Bethany adds. Yes, this can be true in many cases.
In AI services such as Chat GPT and Perplexity, students can request AI to give them ideas for an assignment. It could be just the thing to help get their creativity flowing, supporting them on the journey to a great essay, paper, or other project.
The thing to keep in mind is that AI has the potential to be used in the wrong ways. Entire essays can be spat back out from a sentence or generated prompt. Students can use it to get answers quickly, replacing the learning processes of hard work, critical thinking, and memorization.
In a report by pewresearch.org, 31% of people believe that AI can cause more harm than it does good, compared to 13% who believe that the good of AI outweighs the bad (the other 56% feel neutral about its effects).
AI is becoming commonly used to cut costs that are created by having to hire and pay workers. With AI, companies are able to pay much less people and have work done faster and more efficiently. The problem is, this can cause job displacement and people having to do more work for the same amount of pay.
Milton Holland has been a supermarket employee since 1996, working in various supermarkets around California, in the words of prismreports.org. While he’s currently been working at Vons supermarket, the volume of his responsibilities have increased. With fewer employees, Holland has the job of managing all the self-checkout stands, as well as being a checker for traditional checkout. “It’s just overwhelming,” Holland said, regarding his workload. “It’s like I’m one person working six check stands.” The amount of work that should be distributed by at least three people is being handled by one man.
Self checkout created responsibilities he never would have tackled on his own. AI is supposed to make things helpful, easier, but in this case it does it at the cost of the employees at Vons supermarket, including Milton Holland. Although it is cost efficient to employ less workers, it shoves all the responsibilities onto the small number of them remaining.
The problem is, instead of AI benefiting us, it is beginning to take control of aspects of our lives, including our jobs and classrooms. The overuse of AI that is the issue, not AI itself. According to bipartisanpolicy.org, “The impact of AI on the workforce will heavily depend on its adoption by companies and other employers.” If we use AI wisely, then we are bound to reap its benefits.
AI has the potential to not just enhance learning, but override it entirely. A student at the NYC iSchool says “[I think it’s] getting really bad,” referring to how much AI is being used by students to complete their work. She then talked about the AI assistants that are seen ever more frequently on social media, pointing out how their use is becoming more normalized and widespread overall.
According to researchgate.net, students often turn to AI to help them feel more confident in their academics, which can in turn reduce their anxiety. The problem is, leaning solely on AI instead of getting help won’t help them get better at the task at hand or stronger academically. AI can only serve as a temporary solution. In the long run students need to work hard to gain skills. Relying on something that does the work for you self-defeating.
From her experience, Ms. Mangano, a teacher at the NYC iSchool, sees students often use AI when they don’t feel like they can succeed with their own work. As Ms. Mangano puts it, “I’ve seen it where some students don’t really believe in their capabilities. Then when they kind of take a step back, they realize that they’re fully capable.” Many times if students work hard and make the most out of their natural creativity and knowledge, they can achieve great things. Sometimes, all you have to do is set your doubts aside and try instead of immediately assuming that you cannot perform a task. Even when you cannot, it is much better to become independent by asking for help.
Unlike students, some people don’t have the choice to be self reliant. Even those who try their hardest to be independent are stopped by the people who are supposed to encourage it: Their own employers. The main reason companies use AI is to cut costs. According to medium.com, using AI can cut business costs by up to 19%. Not only that, 63% of companies saw their profits increase by 10% at least.
Although cutting costs while increasing profit, many companies don’t think to truly consider how less jobs will impact their workers, those who rely on the jobs that are being taken away from them. Many get special degrees, and need jobs that fit the part. With the job market changing, many are left struggling to find work that fits their qualifications.
What about the jobs that are being taken? Who’s jobs may be in jeopardy by the expansion of AI? We can’t know for sure, but we do know what has happened so far and what we can predict.
Forbes.com tells us which jobs are more at risk to AI and which ones will likely be safer. They claim that jobs that use a lot of creativity are harder to replace with AI. Jobs that require art, especially. As of now, the best art we have is by human hands and creative influence. AI has not progressed far enough yet to replace advanced painting. However, jobs that include many repetitive tasks and little to no creative influence can easily be taken on by and taken over by AI. These include bookkeeping, resume builders, and telemarketers.
However, there are some shocking exceptions. Some jobs that we never could have imagined AI interfering with are starting to be explored with the technology. Even jobs where human faces appear live on screen.
On the island of Kauai, Hawaii, the local news station has just “hired” two new reporters, James and Rose. But James and Rose aren’t what they seem to be, and reporters like them may become more popular in the future. They are AI avatars which pose as news reporters, created by an Israeli tech company whose hopes are to bring AI newscasters to “hundreds” of news agencies in the months to come.
From an interview on wired.com, a local woman who shared her thoughts said that the AI broadcasts were “creepy.” “No one I know thinks this is a good idea,” she said regarding the AI reporters. Not only does this have the potential to replace reporter’s jobs, it also doesn’t sit well with the public.
How about how others feel now that they’ve watched their profession change over decades? Margo DeAngelo, a former writer at Redbook and Gourmet magazine in the 2000s, shared her thoughts about the change in the field of journalism. When asked if she would rather be a journalist when she was (in the 2000s) or now, she responded,“I think back then, because first of all we were paid better, the pace was slower. It was a monthly magazine, so you really had time to research and do excellent work that I don’t think is being done as much now. We had a whole team that all they did was fact-check things… that stuff isn’t happening now nearly as much.” As it is made clear, journalism is one of the many jobs that has been altered by technological advancements.
She also added that the access of a broader internet audience now plays a factor into the quality of work that is being produced now. “It was so closely aligned with the facts back then, and now I’m seeing less and less of that,” Margo said. “There’s less money for that.” Anyone can publish anything to the internet. In more recent years, companies hire fewer workers and it is less common for people to have teams who check for reliability in their sources. Now, many publications have reduced workers to lower costs, meaning the quality of the work being produced has decreased.
Jobs will not only change, but some will disappear entirely. As reported by entrepreneur.com, AI will alter or eliminate 83 million jobs, but it will also create 97 million new jobs. The amount of jobs isn’t going to be the main problem. It will be how we will have to adapt to the entirely new job market. We will be forced to change our thinking on what jobs we will have in the future. The more conventional jobs that can be done by AI will most likely get replaced first.
The key is to “make yourself irreplaceable,” forbes.com claims. “AI is a tool,” it urges. “Your job will only be enhanced by AI if you make it so. Otherwise, it’s going to be replaced.” The principle of become successful in your work has always been to get ahead of what is required, to show your company that you are willing to be flexible
To help their workers adapt to a changing world, organizations are starting to take action to help their workers be prepared for a future dominated by technology. According to camoinassociates.com, companies have already started training their employees with A.I, and giving them the necessary skills they need to succeed.
The key may just be to work for AI, not against it. There is no getting rid of it now. Whether we like it or not, it will likely be a fundamental part of our society in the near future. The way to get ahead may not be to resist it, but rather embrace it as the world inevitably evolves, no matter the challenge. We can use AI as a tool in work, familiarizing ourselves with it. We can use it to make schoolwork and learning more accessible to all. As a way to more efficiently explain concepts, not to overuse it and make learning just copying. As a way to eliminate the time consuming, repetitive tasks at work, leaving room for the livelier, more creative work. Not to replace jobs entirely. What we must do is work with AI hand in hand, finding a balance to keep our passions and creativity going.
