I do want to acknowledge that there are opportunities here. One of the parts that I think is important with generative AI in these opportunities is thinking about how they're changing the barriers to access, particularly when it comes to things like passing as a native English speaker.
If we're adapting and trying to understand the multiple layers, I think one part is trying to acknowledge one of the potential benefits, recognizing some of the proxies we have for workplace competency, like English writing, which is something that might ultimately be beneficial in allowing people who are non-native speakers to actually access those skills. That kind of goes back to things like grammar.
Part of what we're looking at here is attending to the different.... There are two parts that I think are coming up. There's one dealing with change in the precarious workforce, when you're talking about more contract work, shift work or gig work. AI doesn't change that, but I think AI adds to the importance of studying the shifts in the labour market towards more user platform arrangements, like what we see with Uber.
That's really where I feel there's going to be one potential point of impact: whether you're going to see AI as part of what we call the “algorithmic management” of those platforms. Those are often people turning to those as jobs of last resort or jobs that they're looking to.... I think that in one sense it's an important way of protecting workers who are in those kinds of gig jobs.
The second part, then, I think, is trying to look at the way that, more broadly, we have this silent arrangement with a few large technology firms that are providing critical infrastructure and how conscious they are of understanding the ways their data collection practices are affecting the workforce and might be in place.
I think those are my best guesses as remarks. I think there is a challenge here about, really, this deeper question: Is the driving force of this kind of productivity just going to be something...? Where is it going to be adopted and where are the drivers here? Part of what I see is that generative AI is incentivizing further automation in places that already seem automatable, like in content creation. There is, I think, a way of saying that jobs that have already been deskilled or marginalized are going to become exacerbated by this turn towards generative AI.