Áilín Quinlan: Parents - learn about AI, and steer your child into a safe job
THE HUMAN TOUCH: Some careers will be more vulnerable to AI advances than others
Don’t you just love that comforting roar of the lawnmower; a sound that’s always signalled the arrival of summer?
Enjoy it while you can because it’s disappearing as ever more gardens are patrolled by silent, low-slung robots which trundle around slowly cutting the grass.
These unobtrusive grey or black machines are the thing this summer. It’s hard to complain – other than the fact that they’re not as friendly-sounding and that they reportedly pose a threat to hedgehogs (though they don’t exactly race around at high speed - I noticed that in one friend’s garden, the robot travelled so quietly and at such a glacial pace that even some roosting pigeons relaxing on a nearby rock barely raised their heads at its approach).
There are benefits - number one for most people is that it removes a time-consuming job from a heavy domestic chore-list.
The grass is cut regularly by these relatively lightweight machines that cause less disturbance than big ride-on mowers.
And, because the lawn is continuously topped off in relatively small amounts, grass trimmings and leaf clippings compost more quickly and, therefore, nutrients are naturally returned to the soil.
Also, the robots are silent, though I miss the friendly noise pollution of the traditional mower. The battery-powered robots create no noise pollution and produce no emissions, which makes them more environmentally friendly than the petrol-powered lawnmower.
So yes, thumbs up, I would have to admit, to this form of technology.
But the thing is, the lawnmower isn’t the only thing that’s being disappeared by advances in science.
AI is disappearing so many other things from day-to-day life – like jobs.
It’s something we have to prepare our kids for.
Those job-termination emails from Meta that landed in the early hours of the morning in the inboxes of some 350 of the company’s 1,800 Irish-based staff are but the thin edge of the wedge.
The cuts for Ireland were double the 10% cut that was implemented in other parts of the world – was somebody sucking up to Donald Trump here?!
If the full total of 350 jobs go, it will bring the company’s workforce in Ireland to around half of the 3,000 of a few years ago.
The thing is, remember when we changed from the punt to the euro?
The cost of everything went up because of, yep, the changeover from the punt to the euro.
Remember covid? The cost of everything went up because of, yep, covid.
And now any company that wants to justify lay-offs will do so by pointing at AI.
Figures show that the biggest drop in employment in the economic sector in the first quarter of this year was in the information/communication sector. It fell by nearly 11%.
Here’s an example. An elderly family member recently took a customer service call from a medical clinic regarding an appointment.
It was a female voice, pleasant, but she spoke a little quickly and when he tried to query something he couldn’t quite catch and didn’t understand, the query was ignored. Instead, he was warmly thanked for his time, and the line went dead.
We rang the clinic and spoke to a very nice, helpful receptionist who explained the call we had received was an Artificial Intelligence call, and that some of the information – the bit that caused the confusion - did not actually apply to this patient and should not have been mentioned.
It was all a bit new, she explained, adding that she would pass on the feedback about the fast-talking AI lady and the confusing information she was yakking on about. They were still tweaking the system, but they’d get it right in the end.
Careers under threat are said to include information and communications technicians … translators (remember translators?) customer service, and roles in the data entry/clerical sector.
I read a great piece by a dad who works in the tech sector. His daughter had her heart set on a career in finance, but he was aware that many entry level positions in this sector were being rapidly absorbed by AI.
He carried out what appears to be a formidable amount of research and found that AI is literally demolishing the first steps in some career ladders - the trainee, entry level, and apprenticeship positions.
A lot of accountancy firms are apparently slashing entry-level graduate intakes because AI can do the work far cheaper - in the UK, where this man lives, graduate-level job ads in accountancy, he said, were down 44% year on year.
This is worrying, because where does a new graduate get that much-needed experience other than in an entry level position in their career of choice?
So our kids and us need to be researching the sort of jobs that cannot be decimated by AI. This guy carried out some analysis and identified four human abilities that AI cannot replicate: Emotional intelligence. Creative vision. Physical dexterity. Ethical judgment. Roles that require these attributes cannot be stolen by AI - at least not yet.
The man designed a kind of scoring framework to analyse which traditional workplace roles AI could not replicate. The careers he believes will thrive in the AI age include surgeons, GPs and consultants, nurses. Mental health practitioners, and therapists, teachers. Construction managers, electricians and other skilled tradespeople like plumbers. He didn’t mention carpenters and plasterers but I’m guessing they’re included.
On the other hand, AI policy specialist is a growing field – he said this role involves ensuring that automated decisions treat people fairly, a role that I never heard of and he says hardly existed a few years ago.
Meanwhile, jobs for people with what he called AI fluency, are growing three times faster than average and workers.
This man’s attitude is that it’s a good idea to discuss AI with your child. To help develop an insight into it, a beneficial familiarity with it, and gain an ability to use the tools intelligently – not, we should emphasise, to do your children’s homework for them, but to understand what these systems can and, very importantly, cannot do so that they can accurately identify entry points into secure, well-paid, viable employment.
The man helped compile a book about this, The AI Career Playbook which includes a sort of manual for children.
I don’t understand this stuff, and you may not understand it fully either. But as this dad observed, if you’ve got children preparing career choices in a rapidly changing labour market, a wait-and-see approach in this environment is possibly not the best course of action.
App?
