[Editor’s Note: This guest commentary is by technology industry veteran Kathy Gill, a writer, web developer and instructor focusing on communications and user experience.]
We humans have survived disruptions like the printing press, the telegraph and mobile phones. We should approach human-machine collaboration with a similar mindset, according to Lori Lewis, operations leader of the Technology Trust Ethics team at Deloitte.
Lewis spoke at a recent Seattle University-sponsored discussion: “Will Intelligent Machines Prepare the Next Workforce?”
Fear is a common human response to technological change. Lewis referenced a recent Wall Street Journal podcast, which reported that “55% of Americans believe companies will use AI (artificial intelligence) programs to replace people in jobs.”
“I don’t believe it will play out that way,” Lewis said.
If anyone in the audience had doubts that a consulting firm representative would take a technologically optimistic approach to AI, that sentence should have settled the question.
Lewis framed her talk with the first words from the Encyclopedia Britannica entry for artificial intelligence: “The ability of a digital computer or a computer-controlled robot to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings…” However, her focus was robotics.
“In reality, more jobs are created than lost as a result of [a disruptive] evolution,” Lewis claimed as she launched into a discussion of ATMs and bank tellers.
“Bank tellers haven’t been wiped out,” she said.
In 1985, Lewis told the audience, the U.S. had 485,000 bank tellers and 60,000 ATMs (automated teller machine). Almost 40 years later, in 2022, she said we had 352,000 bank tellers (a 27% reduction) and 470,000 ATMs (almost 8-fold increase).
There’s a lot hidden in that superficial example. Where to begin?
First, many of those jobs are part-time. According to the St. Louis Federal Reserve, less than half the 2022 teller positions were full time (164,000). The 2000-2022 peak occurred in 2007: 342,000 full-time tellers.
It’s not surprising, then, that bank tellers in 2021 had a median income of $36,310 per year. The median income (seasonally adjusted) for all full-time wage and salary workers in 2021 was approximately $52,000.
Second, not only are many bank teller positions part-time, the number of positions per branch has dropped.
- In 2016, the American Enterprise Institute wrote that ATMs had reduced the average number of tellers in urban bank branches from 21 to 13, a 38% decline (over an unspecified time period).
- According to the FDIC, the U.S. had 44,546 bank branches in 1985 and 72,444 in 2022. That translates into a 56% decline in tellers per bank branch (both part- and full-time), from 10.8 to 4.8.
Third, automation often replaces less skilled work. For example, in 1987 jobs “lost to automation stopped being replaced by an equal number of similar workplace opportunities,” according to MIT research (emphasis added).
[F]rom 1987-2016, displacement was 16 percent, while reinstatement was just 10 percent. In short, those factory positions or phone-answering jobs are not coming back… there’s a double whammy for low-skill workers: They’re hurt by displacement, and the new tasks that are coming, are coming slower and benefitting high-skill workers.
It’s true that bank tellers haven’t been “wiped out.” But this relatively low-skilled position (high school diploma) is no longer an options for thousands.
Moreover, Barclay’s installed the first ATM in the world in London on June 27, 1967. That’s 56 years ago! The rate of technological change has accelerated.
The ATM/bank teller comparison is a common example for the “don’t worry, disruption creates more jobs than it kills” crowd (e.g., American Enterprise Institute, Brookings Institute, or Eric Schmidt). However, the words “unequal, inequality or inequitable” are rarely written. And they weren’t uttered in this talk, either.
Lewis touted medical robots like Moxi, used at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (UCLA medical school). Diligent Robotics deployed its first Moxi units in early 2020. Moxi attends to “menial tasks — such as delivering personal protective equipment and medicines, carrying tests or lab samples, and picking up or dropping off items to patient — which can consume 30 percent of a shift.”
MultiCare Deaconess Hospital in Spokane is the first in Washington state to add Moxi to its nursing team, in a trial run.
Lewis also emphasized the imperative to better integrate robotics and computer science in the K-12 curricula. Employers should “invest in upskilling and reskilling their people,” she said. “This is an every-company issue.” No time to wait for some other organization to step in.
She also outlined new job titles associated with ‘intelligent machines,’ such as conversational designer and AI ethicist.
Lewis wrapped up by explaining Deloitte’s Trustworthy AI Framework, noting that “all this needs to be governed by laws and regulations.”
In that regard, the U.S. is behind. Earlier in June, the U.K. government announced a £31,000,000 ($39,400,000) grant “to create a UK and international research and innovation ecosystem for responsible and trustworthy AI that will be responsive to the needs of society.”
To the question of the day, Lewis concluded:
I think AI can help train the next generation of workers, so long as humans are in the loop and playing an active role in training and managing the machine.
Seattle University is a global Jesuit Catholic university founded in 1891. It is is one of 28 Jesuit universities in the U.S. A representative of the Vatican, Fr. Paolo Benanti, also appeared on the program.
In late June, the Institute for Technology, Ethics and Culture (ITEC) released a guide, Ethics in the Age of Disruptive Technologies: An Operational Roadmap, detailing ethical management strategies. ITEC is a collaboration between the Santa Clara University Markkula Center for Applied Ethics and Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education.
