AI is starting to impact hiring for young men and women with recent college degrees and I fear that this will lead to a sense of hopelessness and further deepen a crisis of purpose.
Writing as a high school teacher with two 20-something kids, I see you eye-to-eye, but this situation is also a potent case for pulling college education away from vo-tech education, which it has become for so many, back to liberal arts skills of discernment and vision.
I think those liberal arts skills are vital for a better life, but may not provide a living wage. I look at what's happening and I frankly wish our community college hadn't done away with our construction program. Skilled blue collar jobs are going to go unfilled, while we have PhDs applying for a program assistant job.
That's a great point and a great example, Stephen. What I'm thinking about is kids who go to college and major in Economics so they can "get a corporate job," for example. What those kids - and their parents - seem to be missing is that a liberal arts college is a place to develop thinking skills, not particular skills. If it is business you want, to Business School you should go.
Your example of construction is particularly interesting because AI is unlikely to carve out the entry-level jobs - physical construction - but it almost certainly will diminish the number of mid-level positions, such as project design and deployment. And yet those positions require deft thinking and communicating.
I wonder how the attitudes and behaviors of people working at similar entry-level positions that cannot be filled by AI will change, because they are the ones who naturally will rise into those mid-level positions.
I share your concern here. For so long university systems have benefitted from the position of job training, and if the bottom falls out of the job market, then so goes that argument. There will still be room for colleges and universities as social credentialism, and there is a hope that this shift might create the room for universities to reposition as spaces for personal and intellectual growth as a good of itself.
I still think the chickens will come home to roost. I don't think OpenAI will be able to spend at a gargantuan loss forever, and there will be an uptick in hiring again. But the damage from this devaluing of human creation is irreparable.
I think you answered your own question why the companies are making the policy proposals. We can't even keep the government open let alone deal with the complexities of AI policies.
Someone posted a note to the effect that this is an indictment of capitalism. I think that might be right. It's often said that Marx failed to anticipate the rise of a stabilizing middle class, but what if automation impoverishes that? It's like tech companies blew a hole in the other side of the boat and are relishing the fact that their side is suddenly riding high, awash in the money everyone's tossing at them but still in that sinking boat.
Do people need to work to avoid despair? Maybe. I wonder if nobles of old suffered from ennui or if they were perfectly content to hunt their rabbits and arrange their silverware. [Edit: Here I originally said that economic collapse is the more urgent short-term problem but I think you're right, first it's going to be a sense of purposelessness, particularly on part of young people who can't launch their lives in the conventional way.]
Writing as a high school teacher with two 20-something kids, I see you eye-to-eye, but this situation is also a potent case for pulling college education away from vo-tech education, which it has become for so many, back to liberal arts skills of discernment and vision.
I think those liberal arts skills are vital for a better life, but may not provide a living wage. I look at what's happening and I frankly wish our community college hadn't done away with our construction program. Skilled blue collar jobs are going to go unfilled, while we have PhDs applying for a program assistant job.
That's a great point and a great example, Stephen. What I'm thinking about is kids who go to college and major in Economics so they can "get a corporate job," for example. What those kids - and their parents - seem to be missing is that a liberal arts college is a place to develop thinking skills, not particular skills. If it is business you want, to Business School you should go.
Your example of construction is particularly interesting because AI is unlikely to carve out the entry-level jobs - physical construction - but it almost certainly will diminish the number of mid-level positions, such as project design and deployment. And yet those positions require deft thinking and communicating.
I wonder how the attitudes and behaviors of people working at similar entry-level positions that cannot be filled by AI will change, because they are the ones who naturally will rise into those mid-level positions.
I share your concern here. For so long university systems have benefitted from the position of job training, and if the bottom falls out of the job market, then so goes that argument. There will still be room for colleges and universities as social credentialism, and there is a hope that this shift might create the room for universities to reposition as spaces for personal and intellectual growth as a good of itself.
I still think the chickens will come home to roost. I don't think OpenAI will be able to spend at a gargantuan loss forever, and there will be an uptick in hiring again. But the damage from this devaluing of human creation is irreparable.
I think you answered your own question why the companies are making the policy proposals. We can't even keep the government open let alone deal with the complexities of AI policies.
Someone posted a note to the effect that this is an indictment of capitalism. I think that might be right. It's often said that Marx failed to anticipate the rise of a stabilizing middle class, but what if automation impoverishes that? It's like tech companies blew a hole in the other side of the boat and are relishing the fact that their side is suddenly riding high, awash in the money everyone's tossing at them but still in that sinking boat.
Do people need to work to avoid despair? Maybe. I wonder if nobles of old suffered from ennui or if they were perfectly content to hunt their rabbits and arrange their silverware. [Edit: Here I originally said that economic collapse is the more urgent short-term problem but I think you're right, first it's going to be a sense of purposelessness, particularly on part of young people who can't launch their lives in the conventional way.]