TECHNOLOGY & SOCIETY
Increased Individual Efficiency Could Easily Cause Layoffs
AI needn’t replace human beings to change the average person’s ability to access resources, possibly for the worse.
When discussing AI, people often make a queer argument in an attempt to alleviate general anxiety. It goes as follows: “In many fields, AI won’t replace humans. Instead, they will augment them, so that they’re more efficient and free to focus on the most fulfilling aspects of their job.” This argument isn’t false, per se; so far, AI produces the best results when it’s used by experts who don’t wish to be bogged down by predictable tasks. But the picture-esque outlook of human-AI collaboration drives attention away from an obvious implication. If each individual worker is more efficient, corporations won’t need as many of them to accomplish the same tasks.
Let’s crank some numbers. Suppose that, prior to AI, a company (named “Producto Paradise”) needed 1,000 hours of human labor per day to accomplish their necessary tasks. Assuming an eight-hour workday, Producto Paradise would need 125 employees to meet this demand.¹ This is our baseline. If, due to AI, each individual employee became 1.5 times more efficient, Producto Paradise would only need 84 employees to meet the…
