“Take my role as a business school professor. As the 22nd most overlapping of 1,016 jobs, I am a little concerned. But my job isn’t just a single, indivisible entity. Instead, it comprises a variety of tasks: teaching, researching, writing, filling out annual reports, maintaining my computer, writing letters of recommendation, and more. The job title “professor” is just a label; the daily grind consists of this mix of tasks.
Can AI take over some of these tasks? The answer is yes, and frankly, there are tasks that I wouldn’t mind offloading to AI, like administrative paperwork. But does that mean my job will vanish? Not really. Getting rid of some tasks doesn’t mean the job disappears. In the same way, power tools didn’t eliminate carpenters but made them more efficient; and spreadsheets let accountants work faster but did not eliminate accountants. AI has the potential to automate mundane tasks, freeing us for work that requires uniquely human traits such as creativity and critical thinking—or, possibly, managing and curating the AI’s creative output, as we discussed in the last chapter.”