Who will truly thrive in a hybrid AI-human workforce?

Besides, let’s add Marcus Chen to the portfolio. Let’s talk about Stacey Smith, a hypothetical health insurance claims adjuster. She and millions like her are employed in the US in the insurance and banking industries for regulatory reasons that those jobs cannot be moved abroad. But now, many of those approvals, whether underwriting mortgages or adjusting claims, are easily done by AI agents—more consistently, more easily detecting fraud, and much cheaper. What happens to the Stacey Smiths who make decent wages in places like Kentucky and Mississippi?

What about Bob Johnson? Let’s talk about him. He is a long-distance truck driver. He’s one of the three and a half million truck drivers in the U.S. who are once again making decent wages. They live in the south, they live in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi. They are the breadwinners of their families. They are pillars of their community. What happens when Waymo’s technology expands and we overcome the regulatory barriers to the Bob Johnsons?

So maybe Marcus has a great result. What about Stacey? What about Bob?

BALL: I think if we want to get into specific industries or roles, the obvious ones are consulting, marketing, customer service, entry-level legal work, administrative work. All of this is definitely real.

And then there’s this fuzzy layer of things in the physical world. I kind of doubt a humanoid robot is going to make you a cocktail at a bar, although it could, right? People don’t want that. And this is a very important thing for thinking about the future of work. What will people’s preferences be? A lot of knowledge works similarly, in the end, especially as you move up, it’s about convincing people of things. I am skeptical that artificial intelligence will simply automate the process of internal politicking within a company or other organization.

MOLLICK: I think the story inside the big companies will be complicated. At Procter & Gamble we are he did an experiment with 776 of its employees. They were either technical or business people and worked either independently or in teams of two. At the time, it was found that individuals using AI performed as well as teams that did not use AI really the interesting part was that it also blurred the lines between roles. Business people used to come up with business ideas, tech people came up with technical ideas. But add AI and everyone will come up with ideas among themselves. And this happens everywhere. When I talk to people in coding, especially in industries that have some quasi-creative element like the gaming industry, suddenly people who are designers can code, suddenly coders can do design work, artists can start writing.