A.I.’s Threat to White-Collar Jobs
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Hi,
I’m Jamie Condliffe. Greetings from London. For one last time before I leave
The New York Times, here’s a look at the week’s tech news:
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The
story usually goes like this: Automation is going to take our jobs.
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But
the reality is far more nuanced, and debate rages about which jobs will be
automated, at what scale and where. For the most part, one thing is agreed
on: Blue-collar workers who perform repetitive work are most exposed.
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That
might not be quite right, though. A study published by the Brookings Institution on
Wednesday looks at the degree to which professions are exposed to A.I. by
comparing job descriptions with patent descriptions of new A.I. technologies,
a method developed by the Stanford researcher Michael Webb. It found that
A.I. will be “a significant factor in the future work lives of relatively
well-paid managers, supervisors and analysts,” including those in relatively
technical roles.
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Perhaps
the most surprising finding: Holders of bachelor’s degrees would be exposed
to A.I. over five times more than workers with only a high school degree.
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“Lots
of math, science, technology and business roles involve, say, operating a
power plant to maximize energy efficiency, or running an ad campaign to
minimize cost per click,” explained Mark Muro, a senior fellow at Brookings
and one of the study’s authors. “And these are exactly the things that A.I.
is best at.”
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Previously,
similar studies lumped together robotics and A.I. But when they are picked
apart, it makes sense that A.I. — which is about planning, perceiving and so
on — would hit white-collar roles.
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Still,
workers needn’t panic. Carl Benedikt Frey, an economist at Oxford University
who specializes in technology and employment, said A.I. was “more likely to
complement people in those jobs rather than replacing them.” And Mr. Muro
points out that “these workers are frequently the ones that companies have already
invested in” and are likely to have been consulted about their futures.
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Mr.
Muro added: “I for one am a bit less concerned about the white-collar folks
than the less educated ones stuck in dead-end service work or the gig
economy.”
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TikTok’s Reboot
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I
recently explained how TikTok is in trouble because the red-hot video
app, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, is under scrutiny from
lawmakers in the United States. At the heart of this is a big, untested
argument that Chinese laws could force TikTok, in theory, to send data to the
Chinese government.
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In
an interview with The Times, TikTok’s chief executive, Alex Zhu, tried to assuage Washington’s fears:
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No, TikTok
does not censor videos that displease China, he said. And no, it does not
share user data with China, or even with its Beijing-based parent company.
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Mr.
Zhu said he’d personally reject an appeal for data even if it came from
President Xi Jinping.
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And
it’s reportedly trying other stuff, too. The Wall Street Journal reported that TikTok
executives had discussed “rebranding it in the United States” and “expanding
operations in Southeast Asia, possibly Singapore — which would allow
executives to distance the video-sharing app from China.”
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But
it’s unclear how far such assurances can go.
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“There
doesn’t seem to be a way to assuage regulators in the U.S. without removing
that ownership issue,” Adam Segal, the director of the digital and cyberspace
policy program at the Council on Foreign Relations, told me.
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Google’s Staff Clash
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“Don’t
be evil,” it once said. But Google’s internal mantra now looks like it could
be more like: “Don’t question the management.”
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It
has come to light that Google has ended its biweekly all-hands meetings. The decision
was made just days after Google employees protested the interrogation of two colleagues by
the company’s investigations team, according to CNBC. And it all comes on the
back of a staff protest last year over the company’s handling of sexual
harassment complaints, vibrant discussions on internal memo boards about
company policies and pushback from some workers about Google’s work in China
and with the United States military.
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Then,
this past week, it transpired that Google had hired an anti-union consulting firm to advise its management as
it deals with worker unrest.
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It’s
still too early to tell how this will shake out at Google. But what’s clear
is that the company’s traditional embrace of transparency and flexibility for
workers is straining as more employees question its motives and actions.
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