Tech layoffs are everywhere, with CEOs announcing that hundreds or thousands of jobs must be jettisoned. The given cause is always the same: artificial intelligence. The technology is reshaping the world, we are told, and just as the automobile sent the horse and buggy to the dustbin, so AI is doing to tech workers.
Media outlets dutifully take these titans of industry at face value. “AI will affect more than half of all U.S. jobs, analysis finds,” CBS News alleged. “Report: Losing your job to AI doesn’t just lead to unemployment, it leaves lasting scars,” announced CNN. “America Isn’t Ready for What AI Will Do to Jobs,” The Atlantic, who has a “strategic content and product partnership” with OpenAI, reported in February. “The scientist who helped create AI says it’s only ‘a matter of time’ before every single job is wiped out—even safer trade jobs like plumbing,” Fortune declared apocalyptically last month.
All of these headlines build on the same narrative: sorry, but artificial intelligence is coming for your job, and innovative tech companies are desperately trying to stay one step ahead of it.
But is that really what’s happening? No, or at least, not yet. It’s impossible to square these bold prognostications with the current state of AI—and the data on what it’s doing to and for workers.
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