AI might impact employees differently based on how they approach their work.
Richard Socher, CEO of You.com, a search engine utilizing AI, recently shared a compelling perspective on the varying reactions to artificial intelligence across different professions. His insight hinges on a critical distinction: whether employees view their work in terms of hourly wages or overall industry output. This distinction, he argues, dramatically influences how they perceive AI – either as a valuable tool or an existential threat.
“If you work in an industry and you feel ownership and you feel like your point is to maximize the outputs of that industry, then you actually love AI – massively,” Socher stated. “If you think that you’re part of that being in that industry is getting paid an hourly wage, you kind of hate AI.”
He further illustrated his point with an example from the art world: “If you want more art in the world, more illustrations in the world, you’ll love illustrations being now possible for anyone. I can just hire an artist and for one cent I get a new illustration for my little blog post. I would have never done that in the past. But if you’re an illustrator who thinks of themselves as, ‘I get paid this many dollars per hour of illustrating manually,’ then you hate AI. And I think that’s true for almost every industry.”
Socher pointed to medicine as another key example: “Medicine is one good example where almost everyone in the world agrees that it’s not about more jobs in medicine; it’s about more healthy people in medicine – cheaper, faster, more efficiently, and so on. But most people don’t have that mindset that an industry is about the outputs.”
He continued by applying this logic to journalism: “I think for journalism, it’s like this: to keep people well-informed, right? And so there’s one thing where I’m a big AI maximalist in many ways. I love AI. I think it’s the most interesting thing we could be doing right now in the world. Understanding the very nature of intelligence is something we do better when we build, we recreate it. But AI has never gone and told me… if I read an article and it says four people were killed by a drone strike in Yemen, AI doesn’t know if that happened or not. You have to have someone on the ground who actually collects those facts. And until you have, sort of in the fairly far distant future, humanoid robots walking around interviewing and so on, filming everything and so on, that will be the role of a journalist and that will not go away for any time.”
Socher’s analysis provides a framework for understanding the complex and often emotionally charged reactions to AI. Those who see themselves as contributing to a larger goal, such as improved healthcare outcomes or widespread access to information, are more likely to embrace AI as a powerful tool. Conversely, those focused on the immediate impact on their hourly earnings may view it as a direct threat. This highlights a critical challenge: the need to shift perspectives towards the broader benefits of AI while simultaneously addressing the legitimate concerns of workers whose livelihoods might be affected by automation. The future of work in the age of AI could hinge on finding a balance between maximizing output and ensuring a just transition for all stakeholders.