I wonder how good middle managers can be in retail. I would guess good staff can always turn around a crisis.
And this is why I think AI will either replace all of us or just change the way we work.
Software will and does kill jobs, but only those that are easy to move around anyway. Take generated art for an example: If a simple prompt that you can send to a contractor is enough to satisfy your needs there is a good chance that you are already or will be able to replace artists with AI, but as soon as you want something more, AI alone will not be able to help you. After all an AI will not be able to thrive in an organic human environment, at least for the forseeable future.
The moment the latter is possible, it is a matter of time that AI gives all of us the option to slack off forever.
Perhaps it is wrong to talk about middle management being replaced by AI. It seems that AI as of now is not very inventive. It is a clever mash-up of things that were already done by humans. But most employees just do that. They learn from others in school, college or on the job how to do things in their profession and then employ what they have learned. If they use a computer to execute then actually nothing stops them from being replaced by the computer itself.
The consequence of almost all software the loss of jobs. I've personally been responsible for many many jobs disappearing with the software I've written. AI is just another form of software and if it is at all useful, and I believe that it is, then it will eliminate jobs. That should not be particularly surprising -- computers have already eliminated entire categories of jobs.
I think the subtle point is that not all humans will replaced -- it's just that a human and AI will be able to do the work of a few humans. Same work, less people.
You just described that AI will help... But not do the job. I think that's the definition for job. Anything that the person is left doing is the job part. Anything machines or AI etc does is not the job anymore. As machines help more, jobs become different.
I don't think AI will replace middle management. I think what we consider "middle management" is largely just going to go away over time because it's no longer required or cost-effective. AI replacing it is a big of an oxymoron. AI would just eliminate it, not replace it.
A little different stance on the topic:
AI being able to replace these people at their jobs is not because AI has to be better than these people but because most of the people working at call centres or supply chains are extremely bad at what they are supposed to do.
So AI just needs to be at par whatever the industry requires.
Only matters that require a transaction to happen are to be dealt with a little caution.
It doesn't seem that way, at least yet. If anything AI will just make entry level jobs much harder to get, and make it easier to fire workers that managers don't like.
In the context of this conversation, if AI can perform those management tasks (not leadership, but management), then I think it's only a matter of time before they will.
To be clear, I'm not saying this is a good thing. I just think it's inevitable. I'd probably consider it a good thing if it wasn't for the loss of all those middle-class jobs.
This is also why I recommend Marshall Brain's "Manna". He nailed it. AI isn't coming for entry-level jobs. Not right away. Because manual labour is actually incredibly complex to replicate with AI. But it's coming for the middle, whether we like it or not.
I say this as someone who has spent most of my career in middle management, for context.
A little different stance on the topic:
AI being able to replace these people at their jobs is not because AI has to be better than these people but because most of the people working at call centres or supply chains are extremely bad at what they are supposed to do.
So AI just needs to be at par whatever the industry requires.
Only matters that require a transaction are to be dealt with with caution.
I certainly think that people who use AI will replace people who don't. People that don't use AI won't be able to keep up, and the gap is only going to get wider. I find the claim that AI will replace jobs outright pretty dubious, it's clickbait.
This article gives an example of which are the easiest jobs to replace by AI/programs : middle management. Any manager that merely manages a few people and doesn't take responsibility for any business function ... that's what's getting replaced first.
Tbh, I won't miss these guys at all.
On the other hand, this is the future. You want to talk to your boss ? Well he has 500 reports, so "press 1 to ask for a day off". I do believe they have the potential to be much more flexible than any human though. Of course that's going to be exploited in favor of businesses.
But if my job was essentially to pass on information from management to individual contributors, I'd be very worried.
The thing about AI is that software replaced people piecemeal. The report that took 1 person 2 weeks to generate now is a 20 minute batch job, but that report was run quarterly and was only 1 position. There is plenty more work to do.
We've already automated much of what is there to automate, most of our "bullshit" jobs are human communication or human reasoning. Once you fully automate 1 CSR or 1 compliance officer in an industry, you've effectively automated a large percentage of them. Instead of seeing a gradual displacement of labor, you're going to see large chunks of people become completely irrelevant. We're seeing this in the gaming industry now, where a huge focus is on AI art, aiding in (but not solely responsible for) mass layoffs.
I don't know if AI will eliminate more jobs than AS/400s did, but it will be a much more disruptive transition.
"AI will replace middle management before robots replace hourly workers"
No it won't. In my experience, management does many things that they don't want a paper trail of. Having a system means there will be a record. No company wants that liability, and few would actually adhere strictly to their own policies.
AI will enhance middle management and make things easier, but people problems are complex in a way that AI is a loooooong way off from understanding.
Once they figure that out, it's time for us to kickback, relax, and enjoy the ensuing utopia and/or apocalypse.
AI is far more likely to replace upper management and executive levels, especially in large corporations, since those roles are a lot more 'by the numbers' and act on probabilities rather than specific, nuanced, and complex instances.
Apologies if I missed it, but where in your story did a human get replaced? There were still people working inventory, cash registers, and managing.
I say this because it seems pretty obvious that software can improve the productivity of employees (including managers). But what the blog post at the top says is that AI will replace managers as a category of employees—a much stronger claim.
And this is why I think AI will either replace all of us or just change the way we work.
Software will and does kill jobs, but only those that are easy to move around anyway. Take generated art for an example: If a simple prompt that you can send to a contractor is enough to satisfy your needs there is a good chance that you are already or will be able to replace artists with AI, but as soon as you want something more, AI alone will not be able to help you. After all an AI will not be able to thrive in an organic human environment, at least for the forseeable future.
The moment the latter is possible, it is a matter of time that AI gives all of us the option to slack off forever.
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