Between one-third and two-thirds of knowledge workers’ jobs can be replaced by AI, according to analyzes by the bank Goldman Sachs and the consulting firm McKinsey. Office workers and creators are at the forefront of automation this time, when AI is now also “generative” and can create content.
One of those who got a taste of what that means is Jessica Lynn Nalbach. Earlier this year, she and 24 other graphic designers and world builders were let go from the game company Mindark. This corresponds to a reduction of 40 percent of the workforce.
– It came as a shock, we were not prepared for it at all. It felt like I was being replaced by AI, says Jessica.
CEO: “A tough decision”
Mindark’s CEO Henrik Nel says that the technology enables efficiencies in the business.
– Although it has been a tough decision to lay off employees, it is our strategy to take advantage of and adapt to the exponential development of AI that is happening right now.
But couldn’t you have kept the staff and used the productivity gain to produce more instead?
– To make an analogy regarding technology: if you have a fishing company that employs anglers, and fishing trawlers are invented. Continuing to have extra staff who are anglers when you also have trawlers no longer makes as much sense.
Basic technology shift
Daron Acemoglu, professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, predicts that generative AI will affect the entire economy because it involves a fundamental technology shift.
– It is finally the kind of AI that has the potential to be “worker-friendly”, if it is used in the right way.
But he is concerned that technology, rather than empowering people at work, will above all be used to replace people.
– That’s what the first companies that use it seem to be doing. But you can also use it so that office workers become more productive and can perform new tasks, so that new jobs are also created.