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Up-tool people instead of cutting them
Customer service
In a couple of the firm's direct-to-consumer businesses, AI now handles roughly 70 to 75 percent of customer service needs. That does not mean laying off 75 percent of the service staff. Their job becomes providing a much higher level of service, with more time per customer, and driving better outcomes for the top customers.
Better work
The staff are happy to do it, because everyone wants to work on higher and better uses of their time. The person writing the seventieth sizing reply of the day can't wait to get home. The person handling a customer who just bought $12,000 of product and needs it rerouted to a new shipping address with a customs issue has a far more interesting problem.
Across the portfolio
Some CEOs in the portfolio, particularly in e-commerce, are running full speed and automating teams. Where the work is physical, as in fence building and swimming pool building, AI leaves the construction untouched, so the gains go to administration, marketing, and finance. AI can create abundance, or it can be used to cut people and pull out as much cash as quickly as possible, and the firm has chosen to try to treat people the way it wants to be treated.
Has automation cut jobs before?
Economist James Bessen of Boston University found that the number of bank tellers in the United States grew between roughly 1980 and 2010, even as ATMs became common. ATMs lowered the cost of running a branch, so banks opened more branches. Tellers shifted from counting cash toward tasks such as explaining products and building relationships.
How do economists think about jobs and automation?
Economists including David Autor, Frank Levy, and Richard Murnane introduced a task-based view of work in a 2003 paper. In that view, a job is a bundle of tasks, some of which technology can automate while others remain with people. When technology takes over some tasks, the remaining tasks can grow in importance, and new tasks often appear.
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