Will Your Job Survive the AI Revolution?

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In today’s edition:

  • Chart of The Week: Quit Rate vs Job Openings Rate
  • Announcement: The Recruiting Radar
  • Podcast: What is a Fractional Worker?
  • Article: AI’s impact on the job market: Are we ready for the next industrial revolution?
  • Comic: Striking Writers
  • Thank You Sponsors!
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Chart of The Week: Quit Rate vs Job Openings Rate

According to data from The Conference Board, both the job openings rate and quits rate remain at a high level relative to history. The ratio between job openings and hires, a proxy for time to fill positions, also remains high. Slower than expected employment growth in recent months was likely due, in large part, to the economy, recruiting difficulties, and wage growth will likely be strong enough to impact the inflation trajectory.

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Announcement: The Recruiting Radar

Attention…

  • Executive Search Firms
  • Contingency Search Firms
  • Retained Search Firms
  • Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) Companies
  • Staffing Agencies
  • Temp Agencies
  • Boutique Search Firms

Are you looking to expand your client base, and secure more business in today’s tough economic climate? If so, The Recruiting Radar is positioning itself to be your new best friend.

The Recruiting Radar curates the latest news and industry insights to provide you with exclusive information on companies that are hiring, expanding or poised for growth. Our newsletter is packed with valuable leads and analysis that can give you a competitive edge in the crowded world of recruitment. This information will not replace a sales team. However, it will inspire their outreach efforts.

The Recruiting Radar is a premium newsletter that requires a paid subscription beginning Monday, May 22, 2023. For now, check it out and let me know your thoughts? I would really appreciate it.

> The Recruiting Radar: Business Intelligence for Recruitment Revenue Drivers

Podcast: What is a Fractional Worker?

In the latest episode of The Jim Stroud Podcast, Jim Stroud interviews Karina Mikhli of Fractionals United about the trend of Fractional Workers, who they are, what they do and how long will this trend likely last? | Find out more about fractional workers at https://www.fractionalsunited.com/

Listen to The Jim Stroud Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Pandora and your favorite podcast platform.

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AI’s impact on the job market: Are we ready for the next industrial revolution?

International Business Machines (IBM) made big news when their CEO let it slip that they would pause hiring on approximately 7,800 jobs and instead, replace those jobs with artificial intelligence. Bloomberg reported this

Hiring in back-office functions — such as human resources — will be suspended or slowed, Krishna said in an interview. These non-customer-facing roles amount to roughly 26,000 workers, Krishna said. “I could easily see 30% of that getting replaced by AI and automation over a five-year period.”

That would mean roughly 7,800 jobs lost. Part of any reduction would include not replacing roles vacated by attrition, an IBM spokesperson said.

Further down the article it says…

More mundane tasks such as providing employment verification letters or moving employees between departments will likely be fully automated, Krishna said. Some HR functions, such as evaluating workforce composition and productivity, probably won’t be replaced over the next decade, he added. 

While some see this as shocking, others see it as progress, much the same way cars overtook horse and buggies; just at a much more rapid pace. The World Economic Forum speculates, “Over the next five years, nearly a quarter of all jobs will change as a result of AI, digitization and other economic developments like the green energy transition and supply chain re-shoring.” Here is a chart to put that in perspective for you.

What IBM is doing is directly in line with research conducted by OpenAI (the people behind ChatGPT). To quote…

“…this study offers an examination of the potential impact of LLMs on various occupations and industries within the U.S. economy. By applying a new rubric for understanding LLM capabilities and their potential effects on jobs, we have observed that most occupations exhibit some degree of exposure to LLMs, with higher-wage occupations generally presenting more tasks with high exposure. Our analysis indicates that approximately 19% of jobs have at least 50% of their tasks exposed to LLMs when considering both current model capabilities and anticipated LLM-powered software.”

If you want to geek out on a science paper, its something to enjoy. If not, this is the gist.

  • If your job involves informational-based tasks like writing and programming, you’re in a tough spot. (Researchers, accountants, and newsletter writers… Umm… Yikes!)
  • If your gig requires a lot of critical thinking (psychiatrist, journalist, or _______ analyst) then, you likely will dodge this bullet.
  • If you are a blue collar worker (plumber, HVAC technician or welder), sit back and watch the show, as all the “important people” freak out.

Of course, there is a chance (an infinitesimal one, in my opinion) that people will see the dangerous possibilities of AI and slow things down long enough for us to get a handle on things. Chief among this crowd is Dr. Gregory Hinton, who has been pioneering AI long before it was cool. The NY Times had this to say about it

Dr. Hinton said he has quit his job at Google, where he has worked for more than decade and became one of the most respected voices in the field, so he can freely speak out about the risks of A.I. A part of him, he said, now regrets his life’s work.

“I console myself with the normal excuse: If I hadn’t done it, somebody else would have,” Dr. Hinton said during a lengthy interview last week in the dining room of his home in Toronto, a short walk from where he and his students made their breakthrough.

Dr. Hinton’s journey from A.I. groundbreaker to doomsayer marks a remarkable moment for the technology industry at perhaps its most important inflection point in decades. Industry leaders believe the new A.I. systems could be as important as the introduction of the web browser in the early 1990s and could lead to breakthroughs in areas ranging from drug research to education.

But gnawing at many industry insiders is a fear that they are releasing something dangerous into the wild. Generative A.I. can already be a tool for misinformation. Soon, it could be a risk to jobs. Somewhere down the line, tech’s biggest worriers say, it could be a risk to humanity.

To me, AI is a tool, void of sentience and responsibility. Its capacity for good or evil is all in how its been programmed. There are arguments that a singularity is inevitable, where machines design and improve themselves without human intervention and as such, are a threat to humanity. I think that’s a reasonable supposition to explore and safeguard against. Maybe something should be built into AI that aligns with Isaac Assimov’s three laws of robotics? For those who don’t know, here are the rules.

  • A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
  • A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
  • Finally, a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

I think we need something like that for AI. I know people smarter than me have been thinking about it and coming up with their own theories. I hope for the sake of everyone that a solution is found.

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Striking Writers

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Until next time, see you in the funny papers.

Jim Stroud

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