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Automation, Skill and Identity in an Age of AI - I

Wed, September 4, 8:00 to 9:30am, Sheraton New Orleans Hotel, Floor: Four, Bayside A

Abstract

Barely thirty years ago information technology (IT) was considered to be the final answer to “the labour question” (Zuboff 1988). We are again at a historical juncture, where AI-based automation seems to bring back a similar promise (Levy & Murnane 2004). Whether this new machine age will lead to displacement of human labour or will create new economic opportunities is a matter of a different debate. However, with increasing delegation of human activities to intelligent agents, what we definitely witness is a shift in human skill trajectory (Bright 1958). Michael Polanyi in his book, The Tacit Dimension (1966), argued that much of human knowledge and capability stems from skills and rulesets that lies underneath our conscious understanding. Moreover, human abilities such as empathy, sympathy, trust are often transmitted to us via culture, tradition and are beyond the general directive of ‘skill’. Drawing on earlier work on automation and skill (Spenner 1983; Adler 1987; Vallas 1990), we explore these grey zones in human skills/activities, which, while undergoing the current phase of AI-based automation, go beyond a linear trajectory of deskilling and reskilling (Acemoglu & Restrepo 2018). It manifests rather as a more complex intertwining between human activities, technology, and organization structure. The objective of the panel is to bring together an analysis of these nuanced process through which human skills are evolving and will evolve, given increasing reliance on AI-based automation and how this will impact human identity, which in the modern capitalist system, relies on our occupation.

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