AI: Key to Worker Productivity

I’m reminded, every time I pick up the phone or go to a restaurant, that we’re still experiencing widespread labor shortages. Not to sound like a broken record but Boomers retiring, not enough Gen Z to pick up the slack. Birth rates falling… blah, blah. The US is better off than many countries because of Millennials.

It could be gloom and doom, except we forget about the productivity gains of the past 30 years. Largely brought to us by the personal computer and later the Internet, these gains allowed companies to produce more with fewer humans. To be ungracious to the older generations, it allows us to not need to do everything by hand.

Automation and computers made things SO much easier, even if our elders didn’t like those newfangled contraptions. As Boomers age out, it’s now Gen X and Millennials who are becoming tech-resistant. Most Gen Xers think the TikTok AI is screwing with our kids minds and Millennials live in a state of existential fear that robots will either take their jobs or destroy the world.

Maybe we are the old one now. Perhaps Gen Z, who has grown up with technology, and Gen Alpha who’ve held an iPad since they could sit up with embrace this new technology aid. I can tell you first hand that AI generated programming code is as buggy as a 3rd comp-sci student who drank too many energy drinks. But I can tell you that the same AI is pretty helpful for auto-completing code I’ve written.

Sure, you have seen the nightmarishly bizarre images created by DALL-E, but have you seen the apps that can sharpen your blurriest old pictures? Worried that James Earl Jones will shed his mortal coil and the voice of Vader will forever sleep? Not if Disney has their way (note: does not involve freezing J.E.J. inside Cinderella’s castle)

Point is there will be legitimate cases for AI and ML, but there will be plenty more where some engineer or office worker feels they can shave a few hours of work by letting the machines do it. The robots won’t take over because humans are evil, they will assume control because we are lazy. Automation will always thrive doing the things we don’t want to do.