Can Your Job Be Orchestrated? Yes? Okay, It Will Be Smartified
March 13, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
My work career over the last 60 years has been filled with luck. I have been in the right place at the right time. I have been in companies which have been acquired, reassigned, and exposed to opportunities which just seemed to appear. Unlike today’s young college graduate, I never thought once about being able to get a “job.” I just bumbled along. In an interview for something called Singularity, the interviewer asked me, “What’s been the key to your success?” I answered, “Luck.” (Please, keep in mind that the interviewer assumed I was a success, but he had no idea that I did not want to be a success. I just wanted to do interesting work.)
Thanks, MSFT Copilot. Will smart software do your server security? Ho ho ho.
Would I be able to get a job today if I were 20 years old? Believe it or not, I told my son in one of our conversations about smart software: “Probably not.” I thought about this comment when I read today (March 13, 2024) the essay “Devin AI Can Write Complete Source Code.” The main idea of the article is that artificial intelligence, properly trained, appropriately resourced can do what only humans could do in 1966 (when I graduated with a BA degree from a so so university in flyover country). The write up states:
Devin is a Generative AI Coding Assistant developed by Cognition that can write and deploy codes of up to hundreds of lines with just a single prompt. Although there are some similar tools for the same purpose such as Microsoft’s Copilot, Devin is quite the advancement as it not only generates the source code for software or website but it debugs the end-to-end before the final execution.
Let’s assume the write up is mostly accurate. It does not matter. Smart software will be shaped to deliver what I call orchestrated solutions either today, tomorrow or next month. Jobs already nuked by smartification are customer service reps, boilerplate writing jobs (hello, McKinsey), and translation. Some footloose and fancy free gig workers without AI skills may face dilemmas about whether to pursue begging, YouTubing the van life, or doing some spelunking in the Chemical Abstracts database for molecular recipes in a Walmart restroom.
The trajectory of applied AI is reasonably clear to me. Once “programming” gets swept into the Prada bag of AI, what other professions will be smartified? Once again, the likely path is light by dim but visible Alibaba solar lights for the garden:
- Legal tasks which are repetitive even though the cases are different, the work flow is something an average law school graduate can master and learn to loathe
- Forensic accounting. Accountants are essentially Ground Hog Day people, because every tax cycle is the same old same old
- Routine one-day surgeries. Sorry, dermatologists, cataract shops, and kidney stone crunchers. Robots will do the job and not screw up the DRG codes too much.
- Marketers. I know marketing requires creative thinking. Okay, but based on the Super Bowl ads this year, I think some clients will be willing to give smart software a whirl. Too bad about filming a horse galloping along the beach in Half Moon Bay though. Oh, well.
That’s enough of the professionals who will be affected by orchestrated work flows surfing on smartified software.
Why am I bothering to write down what seems painfully obvious to my research team?
I just wanted another reason to say, “I am glad I am old.” What many young college graduates will discover that despite my “luck” over the course of my work career, smartified software will not only kill some types of work. Smart software will remove the surprise in a serendipitous life journey.
To reiterate my point: I am glad I am old and understand efficiency, smartification, and the value of having been lucky.
Stephen E Arnold, March 13, 2024
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