Bacon's Rebellion

Will AI Obliterate Virginia Jobs?

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by

James A. Bacon
in ,

Virginia is in a two-way tie with Colorado as the state whose workforce will be most impacted by artificial intelligence, concludes Journoresearch.org.

“Professional, scientific, and technical services” was found to be the industry most affected by AI in both states. Fifty-two percent of the industry’s workforce in each state (217,829 in Colorado and 322,493 in Virginia) are estimated to be affected,” states an email communication from Journoresearch, a journalistic research company, that entered my inbox today

The analysis drew from Pew Research, the Bureau of Labor, and localization-management platform Centus, but the email does not explain its methodology. Still, it stands to reason that “professional, scientific and technical services” would be at greater risk of being disintermediated by AI than industries that require lots of hands-on work, such as health care, construction, or hospitality.

I cannot evaluate an analysis I cannot access. But I can say this: Journoresearch asks an interesting question.

Just as the globalization and factory-automation megatrends obliterated blue-collar occupations in Virginia’s mill towns, the AI megatrend could be bad news for Northern Virginia, Richmond and other metro areas where high-end white-collar services predominate. I’ll keep my eyes peeled for updates. In the meantime, let’s just hope that the AI hype cycle is receding and all prognostications of wrenching, traumatic change are overblown.

— JAB

 

 

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28 responses to “Will AI Obliterate Virginia Jobs?”

  1. ken Avatar
    ken

    have hope… remember the black Nazis AI created when tasked for a portrait…..

  2. Lefty665 Avatar
    Lefty665

    Remember the Luddites, then be afraid, very afraid. Of course AI will have to get a lot cheaper to threaten us down here in the peanut gallery. But those professional jobs, ask not for who the AI trolls, it trolls for you.

    1. Nancy Naive Avatar
      Nancy Naive

      The worst situation…
      “Welcome to the IRS call line, I’m Watson, your AI-powered assistant and can answer any of your questions with complete research and evaluation of 10s of 1000s of tax laws and relevant appeals decisions. How can I help you?”

      1. Lefty665 Avatar
        Lefty665

        What model do you suppose the IRS would train its AI on? We have seen that makes a big difference in how AI works. Better hope it's Watson and not Mephistopheles, aka the Revenue Officer from Hell, as the model.

        It was a mistake to give the IRS computers in the first place.

        OTOH, AI powered help lines should be a lot cheaper than the $80B extra they're getting. Suppose the country will get a refund? The advice should be at least as good as what they're handing out now…. when someone hangs on long enough to get through.

        The added help is collecting more money from audits, and 3/4 of the audits are still on people earning less than $100k. Just as promised, the ratio has not changed, but there's a lot more of audits.

        1. WayneS Avatar
          WayneS

          It was a mistake to give the IRS computers in the first place.

          I like that.

          1. Lefty665 Avatar
            Lefty665

            That was one of my Dad's lines close to 50 years ago when IRS was lobbying for lots of millions to upgrade their processing. He tended to follow it with "Just how effective do you want the IRS to be?"

            I was reminded of that a couple of years ago when the administration was lobbying for every transaction over $600 to be reported.

            The scary part was that the IRS thought they could have enough bandwidth to process and store all those transactions. NSA certainly demonstrated that it was possible to do it. But, they're a little brighter over at Meade and they've had the largest computer installation in the world since there were computers.

      2. WayneS Avatar
        WayneS

        Or, "Hello, I am Robbie, your AI defense attorney"…

  3. Nancy Naive Avatar
    Nancy Naive

    Will steam engines obliterate seamans’ jobs?

    Does technology eliminate jobs? Has it ever? It certainly eliminates job titles. But with unemployment at its lowest, the population at its greatest and technology at its most advanced, what do you really think?

  4. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    AI will chew up the lower end jobs – the ones where folks do rote/procedure guided jobs. And from an education perspective, critical thinking skills will be required/demanded.

    Whether it's public schools or voucher/charter/choice schools – you're gonna
    need more than just your basic college degree job.

    AI may well/has the potential to help get us out of this energy/climate mess – yes, even though it's going to use more energy also to do so initially.

    Unless one believes we're gonna just use more and more energy for AI and it won't translate into increased productivity – we'll just chew up enormous gobs of fossil-fuel-generated electricity for data centers to spin their AI (and bitcoin) wheels, that will just "eat" energy and produce nothing (except taxes of course) 😉 .

  5. Nancy Naive Avatar
    Nancy Naive

    Will steam engines obliterate seamans’ jobs?

    Does technology eliminate jobs? Has it ever? It certainly eliminates job titles. But with unemployment at its lowest, the population at its greatest and technology at its most advanced, what do you really think?

    Here, read this. Were jobs lost? Yes. But…
    https://www.kansascityfed.org/documents/7107/the-drivers-of-us-agricultural-productivity-growth.pdf

    1. Lefty665 Avatar
      Lefty665

      Think auto workers. A lot of them have been automated out of jobs.

      Remember that the unemployment rate is low because the labor participation rate never recovered from covid. U2 doesn't count those not actively looking for work as unemployed. They just disappear, poof and they're gone.

      1. Nancy Naive Avatar
        Nancy Naive

        https://www.statista.com/st…

        Don’t look so outta line. There’s four million more in the workforce in 2023 than 2019. 2020 was rough, but it’s been going up ever since and is higher than ever.

        And who builds and services car assembly bots? Jobs change.

      2. Nancy Naive Avatar
        Nancy Naive

        https://www.statista.com/st…

        Don’t look so outta line. There’s four million more in the workforce in 2023 than 2019. 2020 was rough, but it’s been going up ever since and is higher than ever.

        And who builds and services car assembly bots? Jobs change.

        1. Lefty665 Avatar
          Lefty665

          Looks like a few of them are domestic, lotta foreign mfrs, so those jobs aren't here. But, it's like building pipelines, significant labor in construction then it mostly goes away. Or making whisky. I was amazed in Scotland, there were literally 5 or 6 people operating the distilleries where before automation there had been 500-600. It was a ghostly operation, a manager, a secretary, a brew master and 2 or 3 guys in the warehouse. Consumers on the other hand have multiplied:)

          https://builtin.com/robotics/automotive-cars-manufacturing-assembly

      3. kls Avatar
        kls

        plus all those Keystone Pipleline workers who are now coding AI

        1. Nancy Naive Avatar
          Nancy Naive

          So you don’t think they can?

      4. how_it_works Avatar
        how_it_works

        The UK has an interesting way of looking at unemployment. They look at NEETs:

        Not in Education, Employment, or Training.

        I wonder what percentage of the US population is, today, a NEET.

        1. LarrytheG Avatar
          LarrytheG

          most retirees? 😉

          1. how_it_works Avatar
            how_it_works

            “The NEET category includes the unemployed (individuals without a job and seeking one), as well as individuals outside the labour force (without a job and not seeking one). It is usually age-bounded to exclude people in old-age retirement.”

          2. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            is that what we call the unemployed seeking work plus the ones that are not?

          3. how_it_works Avatar
            how_it_works

            That’s what it looks like to me

  6. Thomas Dixon Avatar
    Thomas Dixon

    Give it the Virginia Department of Health. Even AI couldn't lie that much.

  7. Nancy Naive Avatar
    Nancy Naive

    Hmm. Calley’s dead.

    1. WayneS Avatar
      WayneS

      Yes. I saw that. I'm not sure I can offer an RIP, but I will offer condolences to his family.

      1. Nancy Naive Avatar
        Nancy Naive

        Our sins are ours alone. Free will

  8. DJRippert Avatar
    DJRippert

    OpenAI has five stages for progression of AI from now until Artificial General Intelligence (when an AI can do anything a human can do). Those steps (and my predictions of when the stage will be achieved) are:

    1. Conversational – now
    2. Reasoning – long running. detailed analytical capabilities using a variety of data – 2025
    3. Autonomous – AI capable of taking actions with no human intervention – 2029.
    4. Innovation – AI that can invent things (drugs, business processes, etc) on its own – 2035
    5. Organizational – AI that can perform all tasks now performed by an entire organization – 2040.

    Stage 3 will create a huge negative impact on Northern Virginia employment.

    That's five years from now.

    1. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      when will it fix the climate issue?

    2. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      When will it design the perfect wind turbine that even the
      pro-fossil-fuel, culture-war folks will be forced to agree with?
      😉

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