AI Agents are here to steal your job
Welcome to AI Collision 💥,
In today’s collision between AI and our world:
- AI agents here for your jobs
- Wild AI jobs of the future
- The Lemonparty
If that’s enough to get you entering The Matrix, read on…
AI Collision 💥
A friend sent me an article from Australia yesterday about how new “disconnect” laws were had just taken force.
These laws mean that bosses can no longer punish workers if they don’t “pick up” (respond) to messages or calls or emails outside of office hours.
These kinds of laws are on the way in the UK too. They’re already a part of the fabric of work in Europe. And soon enough, you’ll just find them as a part of every workplace in every corner of the world (except maybe China…).
My friend argued that it was the end of productivity.
I somewhat disagreed. Meaning that I don’t think it has any impact on the workforce at all. If anything, it’s further evidence of central points of authority regulating themselves and workers into oblivion.
You see my take is that these laws are fine.
If you don’t want to get a message from your boss at some ungodly hour, that’s fair enough. If you don’t want to work outside of 9 to 5, go for you, have at it.
But also, I know someone who doesn’t give a shit when you message them or call them.
Also, this “person” will be gunning for the jobs of everyone who’s just had a little bit too much of work and wants a quieter life of leisure.
That person is actually not a person at all. Its artificial intelligence, specifically in the form of AI Agents. But I’m guessing you figured that out already.
AI Agents are coming, and they’re coming for the decrease in productivity form white collar workers.
Take a look at this chart,
This is a good measure of productivity in the UK since 1972. It’s simply the output of works, per hour worked.
It looks volatile, and it ebbs and flows. The big decreases are around major global economics events. Black Monday in ’87, the financial crisis in ’08, lockdowns in 2020 and 2021. The subsequent rebound is coming out of those events.
Nonetheless, the trend, long term is down from around 3% to 4% to around 0%. In other words, the UK is not becoming more productive over time, productivity is decreasing over time. Extrapolate that out further and you can guarantee it’s going to head consistently negative.
That’s a bad sign for an economy. It also means if human workers aren’t going to be productive then employers and businesses are going to look to bolster their workforce with technology. And that will be using artificial intelligence.
This is also nothing something that’s going to disrupt industry like manufacturing. This is going to hit the legal profession, accounting, financial services, a whole host of white collar, middle income and middle-class jobs.
We know this is on the horizon because big tech companies are making it so.
Last week Salesforce’s announced the release of, “Einstein Sales Agents”.
This is a huge leap in the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into businesses. For now, it’s aimed at sales operations. But make no mistake, this is just the start. This development heralds a new era where AI not only supports but potentially replaces certain white-collar jobs, reshaping the job market.
AI agents are sophisticated programs designed to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence. These tasks can range from simple data entry to complex decision-making processes, customer interactions, and predictive analytics.
With Salesforce’s Einstein, these agents are tailored to enhance or automate sales processes, offering personalized customer interactions, predictive sales analytics, and automated administrative tasks.
Salesforce is saying this means their AI can handle scheduling, follow-ups, data entry, and even initial customer outreach. This efficiency could lead to a reduction in the need for administrative support roles within sales teams.
Add to this their AI agents can analyse huge amounts of data to provide insights, forecast trends, and suggest better outcomes. In other words, kiss goodbye mid-level analysts whose primary role involves data interpretation and insight.
Then, imagine getting an initial call from a company. For all intents and purposes, it’s human…but really, it’s an AI agents it’s now pitching to you in real-time, responding to your cues, tone, responses, and even maybe negotiating with you.
This is what is coming.
And yes, it’s somewhat of a double-edged sword. While it promises unprecedented efficiency, personalisation, and business insights, it also forecasts a significant reshaping of the job landscape, particularly for white-collar workers.
Yes, it will replace some jobs, many jobs. But it can also be used to enhance jobs, shift menial tasks and work to AI agents, and enable more time for real human interaction from real humans, maybe even in person.
There will be losers from this, but I think also big winners. Maybe it’s companies like Salesforce, or maybe it another that we can’t even see yet. We see it with every big technology revolution, and with AI and AI agents it will be no different.
Big losers, but arguably even bigger winners.
AI gone wild 🤪
You, me, most people, we’re not stupid enough to believe everything we see or hear. Taking a sceptical eye and mindset to things I think is healthy. But there are times when we do believe what we see, hear and read. Sometimes we do take things on face value.
After all, surely part of being human is to have some trust in some people or some things.
But what if we’re fast approaching a world where you simply cannot believe anything.
And that’s not supposed to be a grandiose statement, but quite literally we can’t believe anything, and that the primary role of our AI companions is just to help us identify the truth is everything we see, read and hear.
Maybe that’s the real “killer app” for AI – just a thing to help us detect AI?
I say this after seeing this,
This is (as indicated) an AI image. Looks real though. Very real. If it wasn’t AI labelled and not in the context of this essay, hard to distinguish from reality.
It’s part of a release of “Reimagine” which is an AI photo app coming with the new Google Pixel phone.
It’s good, very good at image creation. And the leaps in the last 12 months of AI generated images has me excited (and a bit worried) for what’s coming over the next five years…I say five years because in one year things will get a lot better again, but in five years, it’s fair to expect nothing will be like it is today and we will be lightyears ahead.
How far ahead? Well…
What about something like professional life-editors?
The idea of people who will use AI to go back through your entire catalogue of photos from your entire life, to edit and adjust with AI to give you the life that you always wanted.
Seems narcissistic, doesn’t it? Well, look at the explosion of Instagram and TikTok…maybe AI life editing isn’t so wild?
On that topic, how will courts prove criminals are (or aren’t) at certain places where certain alleged crimes occur?
Got a good alibi? Yes officer, I most certainly do (thanks to AI).
This also probably leads itself to the creation of new kinds of law enforcement, the AI police. Think Time Cop but with things like photo editing, video editing, the ability to go back and dissect a suspect’s life and what is or isn’t AI adjusted and enhanced.
Ok these are kind of wild scenarios, or are they?
Point is that as AI speeds up in its capabilities, we do have to start to wonder just what is possible and how humans will use it to enhance, or fudge, their entire existence.
What is real is not real, what is not real…is real? It starts to make you philosophically think what is reality, I guess to some it’s one thing, to others it will be something else completely different, completely WILD!
Boomers & Busters 💰
AI and AI-related stocks moving and shaking up the markets this week. (All performance data below over the rolling week).
Boom 📈
- BigBear.ai (NYSE:BBAI) up 36%
- Vicarious Surgical (NYSE:RBOT) up 17%
- Appen Ltd (ASX:APX) up 32%
Bust 📉
- Veritone (NASDAQ:VERI) down 14%
- C3.ai (NYSE:AI) down 4%
- Wearable Devices (NASDAQ:WLDS) down 10%
From the hive mind 🧠
- This will come to no surprise for you, but it’s nice to see mainstream media are finally beginning to catch up on the nuclear theme for AI’s future.
- AI will take jobs. It will also create jobs. But then when used in harmony alongside humans, it might just unlock some of the mysteries and secrets that continue to evade and befuddle science…like helping cure disease and help us to live longer, healthier and happier.
- It won’t be long before AI is such a part of our lives that we struggle to remember a time when we weren’t using AI in our day to day lives and our day to day work lives too. In fact for some, it’s already happening…
Artificial Polltelligence 🗳️
Last week’s poll was based off the video Nick Hubble and I livestreamed to YouTube, talking about nuclear and as Nick puts it…
Even nuclear can’t save us now…
The question of our poll however was, who was closer to the mark? Nick or me? Thankfully (for my sake) I just got the nod.
But only just. And honestly not too many people responded to that poll as normally do, so I’m going to blame the low response number down to a crappy choice of poll.
Therefore today, something new and exciting for today’s poll.
If you think of some other wild AI related job that might not exist today but will in the next five years, hit the button here to leave a comment and your suggestion below…
Weirdest AI image of the day
Vote Lemonparty – r/weirddallee
ChatGPT’s random quote of the day
“The greatest danger we face is not any particular kind of thought. The greatest danger we face is absence of thought.”
— Michael Crichton, 2002
Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to leave comments and questions below,
Sam Volkering
Editor-in-Chief
AI Collision
Air Traffic Control, a role just made for AI envolvement, which ultimately may lead to pilotless passenger / Freight aircraft
I think this is 100% spot on. As we’re well aware most planes are already jam packed with autonomous tech. Getting that last step over landing and takeoff should be interesting. ATC I’d be keen to know how much AI/machine learning they already use if anyone reading this is in that field, or yourself Alan?
Grid and more importantly Distribution systems analysis
particularly for adverse load flows, losses, harmonic analysis, system resonance
and where to place SMR’s.
Likely job: Fiction writer
I agree with Alan B. Also autonomous terrestrial vehicles.
What value the ‘I’m not a robot’ tickbox?
AI OBR (Office for Budget Responsibility). To not just keep an eye on those pesky politicians, but to show them in advance, the likely financial and societal consequences of their policies.
Ai to help stop civil service bloat. It is the only way. Albeit unlikely under the current regime
AI Social credit score compliance agents.
I’m pretty sure that AI is already working in building people’s social credit. I do know it’s been used (well machine learning at least) in actual credit ratings for some time.
Seems some have beaten me to what I was going to say. ATS, lawyers, bankers. Think highly paid but often non-value-add roles. Roles that are hard to fill or always have shortage like haulage, freight, taxi, pilots, train drivers, civil servants, GP’s. I don’t think it will be one area that gets the treatment once these programmes are good enough they will start replacing entire professions. In fact they are good enough now to replace humans. That’s if Labour actually builds enough power capacity in the UK. If they don’t then none of this will happen. Also they may introduce regulations to say AI isn’t allowed to replace people.
[…] Last week I wrote to you about Salesforce dropping its latest iteration of its AI agents into the wild. I quite literally lead that essay with the header, “AI agents are here to steal your job.“ […]