Jonah, my beloved oldest son, is putting in another 12-hour day at the country club. Tomorrow, he’ll finish his final assignment for his last college class. On Tuesday, he’ll work at his second gig — proofreading sample queries for an AI company. In another month, he’ll relocate to New Zealand for a year, where he’ll most likely continue working in the food industry and for AI companies.
On Saturday, we’ll pick up Ian from college. After a short break, he’ll start his summer internship programming for an AI company that helps little children overcome dyslexia. He found the job through a recruiting company specializing in neurodiverse workers, so we have to pay the company $900 to employ him. The alternative was scanning barcodes at Best Buy.
My kids are the vanguard of the new job market—working multiple jobs, making themselves irrelevant by contributing to the growth of AI systems, and working jobs that typically don’t attract college graduates. I like to think that their situation is temporary. Perhaps they’ll find permanent positions at these AI companies. Perhaps they’ll find a solid place within the waves of the new economy.
Read more at Apt. 11D, the newsletter
Apt. 11d 
That’s great about Ian’s job – I would love to believe that AI will help kids with dyslexia and other learning disabilities. We’ll see! When I graduated from college in the 1980s, a friend in linguistics was working on computer programs for kids, and so I wonder how different today’s AI-generated products will be from the ones that already exist.
Super-cool that Jonah is going to New Zealand!
I asked a student in computer science if she was worried about AI taking her starting-level coding job, and she said no, that right now it does that work really inefficiently. Obviously this may change a lot over time.
I’m less pessimistic about AI use in the classroom, though it was driving me crazy a year ago, before I started oral exams and more heavily scaffolded writing assignments. At my not-at-all competitive state university, the smarter traditional-age students are really mad at their classmates who use AI – and also at the ones who are on their phones during class. I had a student volunteer to come to my fall intro class on her own time and monitor for phone use. (Not sure I can take her up on it but it was nice she offered.)
My online courses are 2/3 nontraditional students and they don’t use it, because they value the chance to be back in school. The few AI-generated posts mostly sit on the discussion board without any engagement – I don’t have to point them out (though I have taken a few down) because students recognize them. We may hit the point where large online classes with any kind of writing are completely useless without monitored or oral exams.
But we’ll see. I’ve heard like five versions of the “teaching as we know it is over” in my now 20-year professorial career.
af
LikeLike
I am agnostic about AI. I maintain that it is too expensive. I don’t see a way for customers to pay enough to allow software vendors to make a profit. Right now, it’s being run at a loss. And that’s without paying for all the content the AI vendors are outright stealing.
It’s being sold, but, meh–is it worth the price?
It’s (allegedly) doing great damage to our children’s education. Cuing up AI to write essays, that the teacher then grades with AI, is not an advance–it’s dystopian. We are in danger of losing necessary skills.
The only bright spot is that it is encouraging investment in our power grid.
Cranberry
LikeLike
I am now reflexively against all the large tech companies and avoid AI as fast as I can turn it off where I can turn it off. Fortunately, Microsoft lets you turn off Copilot, because I can’t really not use Microsoft at work. I need about five more years working before I have saved enough that I can’t be made to give a shit, but they don’t have to be the next five years if things get bad. I can stay solvent longer than RFK can fuck with medical research.
LikeLike
Watched episode 2 of Mike Rowe’s new program on youtube called People You Should Know. Title of episode is Teaching the Autism Community Trades. Pretty interesting story.
/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccRG6Mzjowk
LikeLike