Artificial intelligence threatens those who work remotely the most – 12/11/2023 – Market

Long before the Covid-19 pandemic normalized working from home, Nicholas Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University, was analyzing the numbers on the subject. But even the biggest supporter of hybrid work at the institution was surprised by how consolidated it was.

Its most recent survey shows that 60% of Americans and some Europeans have no option for remote work, such as people who work in restaurants or are drivers to make ends meet.

Another 30% work in a hybrid way, working from home two days a week, and the remaining 10% are completely remote.

“Employees generally want to work from home about three days a week,” the researcher said. “If you interview senior managers, they want one more day. So you have this almost bargain.”

For Bloom, two days at home is ideal.

“Think about a typical week: Monday and Friday, I’m at home. I save money on commuting. It’s peaceful, I recharge my energy. I have time to answer emails, read, write,” he said. “Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, I’m in the office — lots of coaching, meetings, presentations.”

In an interview, Bloom talked about how the home office revolution continues and why remote workers are most at risk of being replaced by robots.

Mr. called what we are experiencing a mass social experiment in work relations, and the speed and scale of this is what is surprising and important, isn’t it?
I don’t think there has been anything this big and fast since World War II. What we saw was millions of men going to fight. Millions of women were called to work in factories, stores and governments.

And society has discovered what is obvious now — but wasn’t obvious then — that women can do these jobs just as well as men, and in many cases better. That stayed.

Men returned, and female labor force participation increased. It’s the only other thing like it because the pandemic created this huge surge and everyone turned around and said, ‘Wow, this work from home thing isn’t perfect, but we should be doing a lot more than we used to.’

With AI now in the workplace, how much will this impact the future of working from home and our job security?
If you work hybrid, you’re commuting to the office, say, three days a week. AI probably helps you. Makes you more productive. It helps you design and write things.

So for hybrid workers, I don’t see in the short term that it’s really a threat.

It’s very different if you’re fully remote. AI could potentially — especially if you’re doing repetitive, relatively basic work — replace your job.

If you think about AI, the software side or the visual or voice side is actually really good. If this were a Zoom call, I could almost be an AI. After I didn’t respond very well, you could find out.

If I were in person, the robot that replaces me is very clumsy and will never work. If you think about data entry, call centers, HR, payroll — that kind of completely remote stuff — a lot of that could be replaced by AI in five to ten years.

What was the most surprising fact that Mr. discovered in all this research?
It’s just that working from home worked so well. If you asked me, ‘If there was a global pandemic and everyone was forced to stay at home, what would happen?’ I probably would have said it would be chaos. The economy would collapse.

As it happened, it worked surprisingly well. In 2023, we were probably better. Productivity is a little higher for some people who are hybrids.

So I was just amazed at how well it worked and it makes you think, what else is out there that we should change?