📘 Part 3: Jobs and careers

This episode's vocabulary

The field - a place where you are working or studying in real situations, rather than from an office, laboratory, etc.

Manual worker (noun) - a person whose job involves physical work.

Workforce (noun) - the group of people who work in a company, industry, country, etc..

High-paying (adj.) - used to describe work for which people earn a lot of money.

Luddite (noun) - a person who is opposed to the introduction of new working methods, especially new machines.

To retrain (verb) - to teach someone a new skill so that they can do a different job.

Redundant (adj.) - (especially of a word, phrase, etc.) unnecessary because it is more than is needed.

Up-and-coming (adj.) - likely to achieve success soon or in the near future.

Barrier (noun) - anything used or acting to block someone from going somewhere or from doing something, or to block something from happening.

To fire (verb) - to remove someone from their job, either because they have done something wrong or badly, or as a way of saving the cost of employing them.

Automation (noun) - the use of machines and computers that can operate without needing human control.

Questions and Answers

M: How do you think artificial intelligence will affect people's work?

R: Well, I think that will depend on the field you work in, really. If we talk about manual workers with a relatively low information load, then I doubt AI will do much since they don't need access to huge amounts of information, although maybe it could help them plan more efficiently. But that's a management thing, usually. In comparison, something with a higher information load, like computer programming, could have its human workforce wiped out if AI starts doing all the coding work completely unsupervised.

M: What would you say are the most important factors to be considered when choosing a career?

R: Well, it would be easy to say the salary as it is now, but I think the future prospects would be better to try and judge compared to, well, like I say, the salary at the moment. You could have a high-paying job like a lawyer, but that money won't last long. If you get replaced by an AI like we were talking about there. It's not possible to predict everything. But it might be one helpful aspect to consider.

M: Technology will make some people unemployed. How can this problem be solved?

R: Well, the obvious answer would be destroying the technology. But that didn't really work well for the Luddites. So perhaps a more practical and workable solution would be to retrain workers made redundant by AI to work in up-and-coming fields. I think that happened to miners in one area when their mine was shut down. They retrained as coders and helped operate the machinery which replaced them.

M: Is it common in your country for people to move to other cities because of work?

R: Well, I think it's pretty common to move to other cities, in general, really. Lots of people don't want to be stuck in the same place they grew up. So they move to get work or to go to university. For example, what the exact numbers are, I have no idea, but in a town like mine, with the University and other large employers and organizations, people are coming and going all the time. And this is something you can see in all the other major cities.

M: What kinds of jobs do young people in your country like to do?

R: Well, you'd have to ask them. My guess would be things that involve what they actually enjoy doing. For example, in the past, lots of people got jobs just to have a stable income for their family. But now, people are having fewer children. And they do what they like more. So lots of people work in personal training or become influencers. I think it's the job, or those are the jobs that a lot of people like.

M: Do you think it's easier to get a job now than in the past?

R: It depends on the field. I mean, it's probably easier to become a lawyer because people have access to more information than they did before. And so you could self-teach, and then take a legal exam. However, there are still some barriers to entry like personal connections. And that's always been the case.

M: Is it important to be successful in a job?

R: Well, if you want to keep it, or if you want to have money coming in, then yes. So if you work for an organization, and you don't do your job well, then you get fired. And if you work for yourself, and you don't do your job well, then you don't have as much money as you would if you were better at it. So, yes, it's important, I can't think of a reason or a situation in which being unsuccessful at a job would be a good idea.

M: Do you think artificial intelligence will take over many jobs?

R: Well, it's like I said at the start, it will probably take over the ones that involve a high information load, even just to make the process more efficient. But when it comes to doing physical or manual labour, I think, well, it won't do much to be honest, because AI just exists in a system. We can talk about automation for those kinds of jobs, but our focus here is AI.

M: Hey, Rory, thank you for your answers!