Although even the best AI models have difficulty solving many programming problems, they are already causing problems for programmers. In particular, one.
Sean Kay, a software engineer with 20 years of experience, went from earning $150,000 a year to living in a trailer after what he says was an employer transferred its responsibilities to artificial intelligence. As reported by Fortune (via Futurism), now he is doing odd jobs to make ends meet, as well as working in food delivery and selling his stuff on eBay.
In a saturated labor market for highly skilled professionals, Sean applied for 800 jobs, but received only ten interviews. Ironically, the programmer says that only a few of them were with artificial intelligence.
«I feel extremely invisible. I feel like I’m being filtered out before I even get into the chain,” Kay says.
At 42 years old, he has worked long enough to prove his skills. He has already experienced hiring problems during the 2008 global financial crisis and the pandemic, but this time the situation is much more serious.
In fact, tech companies have become more profitable during the pandemic. Fueled by demand for goods, services, and jobs, the sector grew significantly during the health crisis, triggering massive hiring in the industry. But when COVID-19 subsided, many companies found themselves overstaffed. Waves of layoffs soon followed, which also coincided with an influx of STEM graduates. This led to a tense labor market.
Artificial intelligence has definitely not helped job seekers. Corporations believed the promises that the new technology would revolutionize work — despite the abundant evidence that it is still sufficiently «raw». Also, job seekers like Sean Kay now have to stand out from the sea of spam generated by AI to get their resume read by a human.
According to the publication, research on artificial intelligence and the labor market shows that artificial intelligence is not just taking over the market — it allows corporations to outsource high-paying jobs in the West to low-paid workers in the global South. In some countries, locals are simply unable to compete.
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