The transition from independent artisans to factory work didn't cause massive unemployment. But it cause the former artisans to lose out, because they no longer had the bargaining power they had before - their work was now a commodity. This resulted in "Engel's pause", a period in which wages stagnated, and so conditions got worse because prices also increased.
But AI also isn't just automation. It's the automation of automation. You may think that you will just level up and learn the new skill set of managing AIs, but the AI companies will be collecting the data to automate that too. Often by watching you.
That is being disrupted. Ironically, by American AI firms who want a cut of all software engineering salaries globally.
(+) UK software developer working for an American multinational here, aware that my salary is "great by UK standards but not by American ones"
Dunno why there was such resistance from the owning class afterwards with return to office mandates.
"Moreover, AI is helping offshore workers in the Philippines do new, more complex jobs. They are picking up work training AI models or supervising AI agents. Hospitals in America are increasingly outsourcing the checking of insurance eligibility and filing of medical records to Filipinos packing AI tools. Mr Gallimore says more “high-value” work, such as accountancy or engineering, is going offshore in part because “AI is a leveller. You can now teach someone complex stuff quickly” and still get it done more cheaply than in America or Europe. Some of this is done at so-called global capability centres, captive back offices that are booming in India and also now growing in the Philippines."
It seems like AI has incidentally commoditized the complement (procedural knowledge), and in turn created greater demand for inputs like human judgement and "empathy".
How is this HIPPA compliant? Please tell me there’s an aspect of HIPPA that requires sensitive data to be only accessed and processed by Americans on shore. You’d think the multiples we pay on health care for worse outcomes would at least be supporting our own domestic middle class with this sort of basic back office white collar work
I think as well there is currently the following: AI still needs an operator, in the same way than a bulldozer needs a bulldozer operator. And like with bulldozer, there are always something that business stakeholder wanna dig, now that digging is faster.
If you are an American or European with colleagues in India, and if they are working or attending meetings after regular work hours, they don't have good WLB. Given a choice, I doubt they would want to attend the late night meetings. Life in India is already like playing a video game in hard mode, and yet we have to work lot more hours for lot less pay, and be regularly told how shitty offshoring work is.
[1]https://www.news18.com/viral/26-year-old-ey-pune-employee-su...
[2]https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/it-employe...
Oh dear
The only report that I know of that is available is the ICRIER report.
I haven’t read the report itself, but it’s supposed to show modest hiring growth.
Conversely I know that most of the outsourcing vendors are seeing reductions in headcount when it comes to outsourced tech operations.
So, insurance claims are handled by people who operate in different legal system and by unaccountable undererministic system. And people are pressured to perform fast.
This is not about "automating complex task". This is about "create accountability sink for fraud we want them to do and create system that will perform said fraud".
If you have a globally distributed sales team with no single office for example with people throughout APAC, the Philippines is the unquestionable place to hire for IT support roles for that region.
And on the flipside a lot of AI vendor ideas like helping doctors turn voice transcripts into notes has just been annoying for the prospective user--they feel they may as well type it up themselves if they then have to review and correct the AI notes
Even learning through open source participation requires understanding the English speaking culture, and that's a kind of knowledge that only people who have lived in those countries can really grasp.
In my case, most of my knowledge came from Microsoft's learning center materials. To actually learn deeply, I had to read papers. And I only knew about them because I went to graduate school. But there were already many libraries that made it easier to apply that knowledge without reading the papers directly.
So I think how useful AI is depends a lot on where you live and what kind of environment you're in
I think that two arent as different as you believe.
> https://researchprofiles.ku.dk/en/publications/winners-and-l...
Surely, AI helps them do stuff even cheaper, and cheap is good, so their business should be booming?