There is no shortage of hype around AI coming for jobs, and while the U.S. labor market has begun to sputter, hard evidence of AI-related job losses is scarce.
Geoffrey Hinton’s message on a recent podcast about artificial intelligence was simple: “Train to be a plumber.”
Hinton, a Nobel Prize-winning computer scientist often called “the Godfather of AI,” said in June what people have now been saying for years: Jobs that include manual labor and expertise are the least vulnerable to modern technology than some other career paths, many of which have generally been considered more respected and more lucrative.
“I think plumbers are less at risk,” Hinton said. “Someone like a legal assistant, a paralegal, they’re not going to be needed for very long.”
2022 was the year a Trump tax law took delayed effect that hugely impacted the cost of software developers and similar IT roles — we are no longer R&D investment for tax purposes. You’re right that it’s impossible to disentangle AI numbers from that. You’re right that executive hype can hurt jobs even if the reality is they are shooting themselves in the foot.
But the real deal is they are going to quickly find the most they can reduce headcount is 5-10% and most individual teams don’t get enough of a boost to cut even one team member, so even those numbers are (IMO) unlikely to be realized.