"The robots are coming for your job" is something that has been spouted for decades now. Pundits love to make these shortsighted predictions to get some air time.
I see AI as an enhancer, not a replacement, like computers or the Internet were before it.
I mean how many Horse Carriage Drivers are still around? Or blacksmiths?
Mike Rowe has a very good point, some fields will be losers and some fields will be winners. Some of those losing fields will be white collar workers so if you're in that losing field you should be prepared to career switch or become unemployed.
Obviously the headline is much more ominous that what he said.
> I mean how many Horse Carriage Drivers are still around?
Aren't there just drivers anymore?
> Or blacksmiths?
Metal workers are still a thing.
> Mike Rowe has a very good point, some fields will be losers and some fields will be winners.
He doesn't. For starters, he doesn't have a basic understanding of what AI does or means. In his mind, AI will replace workers because it is seen as autonomous, which definitely is not.
Though I find it ironic that AI could, theoretically, help replace TV show hosts like him pretty much tomorrow. We already have virtual hosts and AI could create both the character and the scripts.
I encourage you to try to drive a car the way you control a horse. It's a different set of skills; it'd be like saying that it's not problem AI will remove taxi drivers because then can just be a pilot. No, it will take retraining.
> Metal workers are still a thing.
Again, I'm not saying every job will disappear and neither is Rowe. There are still blacksmiths; there are just less of them.
> In his mind, AI will replace workers because it is seen as autonomous, which definitely is not.
I see you're intending to argue dishonestly and not actually look at his comments.
Happy that you agree with him. White Collar workers such as TV hosts may need to retrain into new jobs due to the advances in AI.
It seems to me that the problem is that the number of well paid fields seems to be decreasing and the difficulty of switching is prohibitive. E.g. I don't have the time or resources to go back to college in a new field and then rebuild a career from the ground up all over again.
This is the problem for me. I’ve been trying for years to find a way to go back to school, but I just don’t see how I can pay the ridiculous tuition + fees + rent + bills + every other necessity without working full time. And even then, I have a feeling I wouldn’t be able to complete a degree in the “usual” amount of time, which means if I did go back, I’d likely just end up old and competing with much fresher and probably much smarter people for a much lower salary. A friend straight up told me the other day the only reason they believed me and [another developer] could afford to live here is because we worked in software.
I was putting some savings together to try anyway, because the alternatives are status-quo or worse, but I’ve hemorrhaged a lot of those savings due to some emergencies + just being unemployed.
The usual approach is to attend school part time or online on nights and weekends while staying in your current job. If you only take one or two courses at a time this isn't a huge financial burden, especially if you can do some of it through a community college.
Yes, this is difficult and time consuming. It will require sacrificing other aspects of your life for several years. But many people find a way to make it work.
I see AI as an enhancer, not a replacement, like computers or the Internet were before it.