AI revolution means no profession or individual roles will go unchallenged

IN THE global stock market, the current artificial intelligence (AI) revolution has created a multi-trillion dollar speculative event that has some uncanny similarities with the Industrial Revolution.

The spinning jenny – a multi-spindle spinning frame used for spinning wool or cotton – forever altered the history of textile production when it was created back in 1770, vastly improving the efficiency and production of textiles in Europe, the US and elsewhere.

To a large extent, there is an impact of similar or even greater magnitude being seen with the rise of AI today, especially in the stock market.

Of course, it’s still early days in this fourth industrial revolution, or what is more commonly known as Industry 4.0.

California-based tech giant Nvidia is leading the way in fuelling the AI revolution. Since the turn of the year, its shares have gained nearly 92 per cent as at May 15.

The company led by chief executive Jensen Huang reports its first-quarter results on Wednesday (May 22), and some Wall Street analysts expect revenue and adjusted earnings per share to rise by 242 per cent and 411 per cent respectively year on year.

There are many other examples out there of tech stocks experiencing giddy heights.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, a global foundry that makes chips under contract for most of the world’s major semiconductor firms, earlier this month reported a 60 per cent increase in revenue in April.

Even Microsoft, which is so large that most of its new products barely register on its bottom line, has seen a significant impact from its ChatGPT affiliate.

For the rest of Silicon Valley, AI is pretty much an arms race. Meta Platforms, Alphabet and even eBay all vowed during the first-quarter earnings season to open up their coffers to spending on Nvidia’s chips and other AI capabilities.

Impact on jobs

As far as jobs are concerned, no profession or individual roles will go unchallenged by AI.

The biggest challenges so far appear to be in the tech sector itself. For many of the last 25 years, people with computer-programming skills were in constant high demand. Coding skills were to the 21st century what weaving and cotton-spinning were to the 18th century.

Now, in an otherwise strong jobs market, and as tech companies continue to reap record profits, many highly skilled people are struggling to find work.

The problem is that computer code, which requires a dash of creativity and a lot of methodical repetition, is the ideal language for generative AI.

“AI writes its own code,” said JD Joyce, president of Houston-based financial advisory Joyce Wealth Management. “Hopefully, it will take away some of the more mundane tasks that humans have had in the past, and allow people to focus on more meaningful things.”

It’s hard to find someone who works in technology who doesn’t deploy AI as an assistant in some capacity. One web designer in Texas told this reporter that he used ChatGPT to make an app for a client, although he had to tweak the app a little after the generative AI had done the heavy lifting.

More people are also using an app called LazyApply to automate their job-application process. And media companies are beginning to experiment with using AI to perform basic copyediting tasks such as summaries of long articles.

It’s not just the media and tech sectors that are making use of AI to do some job functions.

German consumer products giant Henkel, which makes soap and other household goods, is using AI to detect flaws in its packaging.

Many lawyers use AI to write briefs, and some have even been exposed for the practice because these case summaries cite non-existent precedents. Early versions of ChatGPT are said to fail to understand the nuances of academic and legal citations, and view source references as just another stylistic flourish to be imitated.

Over time, almost all workers around the world will have to weigh the merits of automating some of their job functions. In short, a second industrial revolution is afoot.

Joyce, of Joyce Wealth Management, argued that the jobs market is always being disrupted by new technologies. The arrival of the motor car, he pointed out, threatened ancient trades such as whip makers.

Inevitably, jobs that didn’t use to exist – such as taxi drivers and car factory workers – emerged. A similar cycle is set to occur now that AI is nearing the ability to drive and manufacture cars.

“If people are willing to look for the next transition, and move forward, there is a lot of money to be made,” said Joyce.