Sophia Mu ’27, Feature Writer

An AI robot working amongst humans in an office job. (Photo by Vesna Art).

According to Goldman Sachs, 300 million jobs will be taken by artificial intelligence (AI) by 2030 — with only 69 million AI-related human jobs to fill the gap. It seems that generative AI is inching closer and closer to replacing humanity. No industry is safe from this dystopian takeover, and many wonder: What will it take to secure a job without the threat of AI replacing it? I spoke with the Newark Academy Technology and Media Services Department to get their thoughts on the future of AI in the workplace.

Mr. Farman, NA’s Media Support Specialist, believes that white collar jobs will face more losses. He says that, “we are not truly in the age of AI,” with machine learning models “regurgitating what they’ve learned as opposed to being able to truly create and truly invent.” Ms. Hudson, Technology Support Technician, agrees. She notes that the hands-on skill set in blue-collar jobs is difficult to replicate solely with AI, without involving automation.

However, Mr. Kapferer, Director of Technology Media Services, believes that AI may “blur the line between white and blue collar.” After all, a surgeon’s practice is quite hands-on, but they still require extensive background knowledge of the human body. Can a surgery robot trump (a minimum) eight years of schooling and five years of residency?

Many predict AI-related jobs will be humans overseeing or managing these large language models. After all, AI is not infallible. Ms. Hudson remarks, “Humans have biases, humans are very complex,” and we are ultimately the ones feeding AI information. However, we can correct our errors, while AI cannot distinguish these differences as clearly. Someone has to manually go back in and train the AI to rectify these mistakes.

Perhaps AI can even “free people up to do things that they really care about,”  Mr. Kapferer expresses. However, even if AI will take away the busy work, not everyone has the liberty to work for their passions. People still need jobs to reliably support themselves, and AI does not offer many alternatives unrelated to watching over its machinations. Still, the trends of industries are prone to change, so specializing in your passions and then figuring out how they fit into the world is better than gambling on the rise and fall of future jobs.

We always seem to be at odds with ethical use of technology, leading to the lack of regulations. Mr. Farman laments the nature of technology “constantly changing that by the time regulation is put in place,” so AI-related legislation is “almost guaranteed to be in some way obsolete.” Finding the balance between not inhibiting innovation and exposing the world to possibly dangerous creations will prove difficult in the years to come.

However, unlike AI, humans have empathy — which is essential to projects involving teams. Ms. Hudson seconds this, citing the networking opportunities and social interaction lost through the screen. Humans are also highly adaptable, able to digest new pieces of information. Human thinking can bring about new, exciting ideas, whereas AI cannot produce new content outside its algorithms and datasets. Critical thinking is what allows us to offer unique insights and innovations to the world. 

Ms. Hudson says, “humanity is a requirement for the world to operate.” There are numerous jobs that require human-to-human interaction such as education, salespeople, administrators, and so on. Through these exchanges, we can match solutions to individuals based on emotional intelligence, observing body languages, and prior experiences to distinguish person to person. AI cannot, as it cannot fully understand the complexity within humans like we do. 

Ms. Hammond, Director of Digital Learning and Literacy, says, “Change is the only constant, therefore your ability to learn becomes even more critical once you’re outside of the schooling environment.” School is meant to prepare students’ skills to survive in the adult world, including teaching oneself how to learn something new, innovating new strategies to achieve results, and adjusting to extenuating circumstances. 

Mr. Grimaldi, Instructional Technologist, agrees, stating, “You can either become very stagnant in the way you do things, or you can always strive to learn new things.” 

The insights from NA’s Technology Department make one thing clear: our jobs will not be stolen away, at least, if you are human enough to adapt.