Job displacement

...[M]y current model of the world is that these changes might happen faster than people expect; in such a way that maybe someone who starts a degree right now involving anything in terms of like language...something like that involves a lot of symbol pushing or typing on a keyboard or what not...their degrees will probably be economically obsolete by the time they graduate. That's a problem that I don't think anyone in the world is like trying to solve as of the moment.

I know a bunch of virtual assistants who went from like earning $10-15 an hour to $0 per hour, because it's so much cheaper to just pay $20 a month for GPT access, and then just generate all your copywriting or whatever through it. The Philippines is very exposed to this because a significant fraction of our economy depends on BPOs, right? So outsourcing. And a lot of those outsourcing jobs can be automated away. So you have this looming unemployment crisis. Which again, is not unique to the Philippines, but we are particularly vulnerable to this. I don't know if anyone actually has the foresight to prepare for it, or that if you can even prepare for it. It's just all these problems coming at us at a very rapid pace. There is a real sense in which some of these things that we have created are starting to outrun us. I don't mean to say that to make people panic. It's more like...this is the situation right? We require some urgency. So what are we going to do about it? At the end of the day, you want to ground yourself and actually look at what's going on so that you can do something about it.

I hope that a lot of people would be persuaded to sort of think about what kind of world would it be like, for example, if you suddenly are able to automate maybe half of the existing jobs? What happens then? How do people's livelihoods change? How do you make sure that you know that that everyone still gets fed, and [that they] can still get meaning in their lives?

I really think that a lot of jobs will be completely automated by the end of this decade. And that means that either people will have to adapt or we will have a huge crisis on our hands.

The thing is, you can't just ask a farmer to become a software developer, right? It's like this economic policy where you can just take people from one place and put them in another, and [expect] that they're going to be completely fine...that's not the case at all. So what will we do when suddenly a lot of people can't earn a living from their labor? That's going to be a very massive headache.

And I'm not even safe from [all] this [automation]. Before all this, I was a programmer for quite some time. Programming is actually one of the first things that these models have managed to partially automate. So I guess the programmers have basically put themselves on the path to not having jobs anymore. That's a bit ironic.

...[I]n the near term, I definitely think that all white collar jobs are at least going to be massively affected by this. Even if you were like "Well, it can't replace the best humans, right?", imagine companies laying off 90% of [their] workforce [just] because the 10%, their best employees, can do all the others' jobs with the help GPT 6 or whatever. So yeah, white collar jobs are gonna be affected, which is kind of ironic, because, all our people built this thing.

So I think about...call centers...any type of like rote labor and reviewing like a lot of logistical work I think is at risk. And...people have to do like ridiculous jobs in the Philippines to make a living...the poverty levels and the way people live in places where that's really common is already so sad. And I just wonder what will happen to those people...even graphic artists, like they can be...replaced by DALL-E at this point. Like, what will happen to people who really depend on manual labor and applied creativity in that way? I wonder about that. In general, like that's worldwide though, but especially in the Philippines where there's so much income inequality and income disparity that you can see that are driving through the streets.

The first [trend I see] is the fact that the AI will tend to obsolesce the the jobs that are the most tedious. So things like...being a BPO call center customer support agent. All of this stuff is guaranteed to be obsolesced by AI, and the reason is not even because the AI is super good already. The reason is because the Converge [call centers] of the world don't give a shit about Filipino jobs. What they want to do is give the best value to their shareholders. So if they can replace 20,000 Filipinos here in Eastwood City with one AI bot, they will do that for sure, and I'm sure that the the work for that has already started. In fact, I'm sure it started like a year ago. So what does that leave us? It means that you know, the BPO sector is basically done for, and that currently equates to about 5% of the Philippine GDP. So that's...a fairly large chunk of our young labor force suddenly not having anything to do with their lives...Where will they go, right? So I don't know the exact number of BPO Employees, I should have this number in my head, but I do know that it equates to about 5% GDP, [that] entire sector. So where do they go?

So in your...average advertising agency, you'll usually have like very young people...rank-and-file with junior designers, basically. So maybe, right out of college...you know a little bit of Photoshop, you have like a whole series of senior people above you in the hierarchy, and they're all teaching you how to do stuff. So you learn by basically copying what they do or listening to their instructions...The problem is that AI right now, particularly things like Midjourney, can kind of eliminate the need for that junior rank-and-file because if you are a little bit above that [level] already, like maybe a creative director type, you can just...instead of telling a human to...create or render this illustration for you, you can just type it into Midjourney. And because you're a creative director, you've already got taste. You already know what the parameters of the campaign need to be. It's like you already understand the concept. So the thing about Midjourney is because it has no real sense of what is appropriate. You have to tell it, right, but because you are a creative director with...potentially years of experience, then you can do that quite well. You can type in some instructions, and then it'll give you like a whole bunch of different options. So it kind of eliminates the need for that junior layer. Now, my problem with that is...although, yeah, I mean of course, if you look at it from the point of view of the employer...you're like: "Oh my God! That means I can save on [costs]. I don't have to hire so many people". But the problem with that is...How do you train the next year generation of creative directors, if no one goes through the junior level? Because, like I said, you replace all the juniors with AI. It's like the way that humans tend to learn from each other is that they come in as apprentices, as...students, as interns...and then you learn that way. But if you replace the need for that with just AI tools, then that generation of people [will] never learn, because you wouldn't hire them. And that's the same in every industry that isn't...like physical, you know...I guess things like art, copywriting, design, [and] stuff like that. Anything...where the output is kind of a little bit more digital, a little bit more visual, a little bit more maybe auditory. It's like AI can just do it better. So basically, it will be so much harder to break into those industries, because you can't even break in at the ground level anymore. Because there's someone better there which is...OpenAI or GPT or whatever.

So the [Philippine] service sector is largely fueled by [business process outsourcing (BPO)]. And of course, people kind of see...because of AI, there's little to no need for the massive business process outsourcing [industry] that we have right now. There's less need for call centers...No, maybe it's the same AI, or maybe it's like the same scope of BPO; it's just [that] the priorities have changed. I [still] don't know what...industries would form. But I think that's because Philippine society is largely service-oriented. Then we'll definitely see a radical shift of the service sector to more closely integrate AI. Potentially, most people would be losing a lot of jobs that would be operated by AI. But then, there would be new jobs that might emerge...in the wake of the AI revolution. Let's say, some jobs would merge, essentially the support structure around AI.

...I think everyone will probably say this, probably the lowest skilled of our tech force will be affected, but this will also make it harder for people to enter the tech workforce. Because I mean, most of your...entry level positions in the tech workforce are slightly lower skilled: it's about writing, it's about executing, and that's what AI does well -- execute. You might see our service industry, which is a big chunk of where our GDP goes to (like the BPO space), be affected by it...I have a feeling most of our lower skilled tech force, which is funny because in the grand scheme of things, they're all considered high skilled work. But yeah, our lower skilled tech force, from our basic programmers to our basic customer care...might be the most affected...Globally, in terms of AI, and I can speak at least for tech...it's gonna get harder and harder for people to actually enter tech, because you have entry level jobs that are generally mostly [automated] jobs now. So that's a big, big thing. You would be lucky...if you find a place that basically talks about how to properly use ChatGPT, like we have our own local use case of ChatGPT in my consultancy. So that works, but that's globally, how it could affect at least the global tech industry as a whole.

...[K]ey turning points [for AI in the Philippines]...But I remember particularly well, when there was a big turning point of like, you couldn't get a customer service agent on the phone anymore right away...you suddenly had to go through different protocol after protocol after protocol, and you can't really get a human, and there was no option to like talk to a human. That was [around] 2017-2018, I think, where I noticed that we were starting to use chatbots to handle everything...one of the hardest things to ever have to work through. [There] was one experience where I was talking to Globe...and talking to Smart, and having to go through [tons] of chatbots to get things done, when a human could probably fix that in one call. And I noticed how that changed around 2017-2018.

...[C]reative industries are actually at risk if they're not able to...[adapt to AI tools] fast enough. [And] anything that is low complexity and low uncertainty is at risk of automation, like pressing buttons in [an] elevator kind of job, right. So any menial task [will] automate the hell out of that...[B]ut I think what was an unpleasant surprise was that AI had encroached on white-collar work first. Like we were worried...we were kind of looking at factory workers, things like that. Self-driving trucks as the place...Actually the physically robotic AI is...still in development as you know, right. But the digital...like those creative agencies, generative AI...happened first. So completely...unaware creative writers, artists, advertisers, journalists are getting hit. And again, if they don't adopt and adapt AI...I don't see a bright horizon for these guys, unfortunately.