Artificial intelligence and the evolution of work

The belief that artificial intelligence will cause a retraining of labour is often misplaced. This is due to a lack of consideration of the process behind the revolution in the work environment: let us try to reflect on this.

Qualifying work

Many jobs are low-skilled, if not downright disqualifying. Normally we tend to consider as such all those activities that do not require the use of human intellect and creativity, i.e. all those professions that require a merely practical, assembly-line, non-craftsmanship, and non-creative application; those based on codified and elementary processes, even if they belong to higher professional spheres, are also part of these activities. We are therefore arguing that the individual’s intellect (i.e. his intellectual craftsmanship) is the discriminating element between a qualifying and a non-qualifying activity.

One might think that qualifying work means, for example, improving the work process by making important changes resulting from good practice and analysis from observation of activities, but this definition, based on mere observation, leads us to consider man as a machine within an industry. In the film ‘The Working Class Goes to Heaven’, the protagonist is timed to optimise his performance and any kind of pejorative variation to that performance is rejected and sanctioned and never understood.

Is this not also a job qualification? Evidently not.

Qualifying work means providing the possibility for the worker to express his or her potential to the fullest, putting him or her in the condition that Toynbee calls optimal stress. Optimal stress is at the heart of theories of social progress and should not be understood as a condition of negativity but of research. In the text‘Organisation Theory‘, scholars James G. March and Herbert A. Simon conduct reflections on this subject, trying to clarify the role of work within the organisation and the real potential provided by the correct management of the individual in the work context.

Artificial Intelligence and Skilled Work

The statement that artificial intelligence will improve the condition of workers by replacing them in less skilled activities is simply wrong. Artificial intelligence will not improve the condition of workers: it is man who will have to do this and will have to do it well before the implementation of artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence will replace humans in exactly the same way as the introduction of robots in industry, but this has nothing to do with the retraining of the worker. The process of retraining requires infrastructure, processes, job creation, structured and complex training paths that see interaction between the political sphere and the world of industry. Alternatively, the introduction of artificial intelligence will relieve workers from the de-skilling processes and make them unemployed.

We must therefore be very careful here: it is not artificial intelligence that solves the problem. Artificial intelligence is the tool that is adopted to create the conditions for change, but this change must be designed by the political-business level of the country.

Qualifying work but how?

Friedrich Pollock, a colleague of Max Horkheimer, was a philosopher and sociologist who lived between 1890 and 1970. His studies focused on capitalist development and, consequently, on industrial development mechanisms including those of automation.

In the automation phase, machines take over a large part of the stupid and strenuous routine work, just as, since the beginning of industrialisation, they have taken some of the heavy physical work away from humans

Friedrich Pollock, 1956

Pollock’s sentence poses an essential condition for reflection: by relieving man of some of the heavy physical labour, what will he be able to do? It is clear that the worker’s condition within the work context must be rethought. A first point would be to convert the worker from an operational role to a control role; this, by the way, is a discussion well known to those who deal with theories of work and organisations. In 1964, Robert Blauner, sociologist and author of the book‘Alienation and Freedom. An investigation into the conditions of blue-collar work‘, clarified this concept of change very well.

In these shifts of emphasis from the task to the production process, the worker’s role shifts from that of a provider of skills to that of a responsible controller. Continuous process technology thus reverses the underlying trend towards greater division of labour and increased specialisation.

But this growth Blauner speaks of should also be matched by better living and working conditions.

Balancing artificial intelligence with human intelligence

There is therefore a goal that should be pursued at government level: that of balancing the integration of artificial and biological intelligence in order to achieve a desirable and non-usurious living and working condition. It is a well-known condition and in many ways considered utopian, but it is necessary to point out that scholars such as Sam Lilley, author in 1951 of the book“History of Technology” and of “Automation and Social Progress”, Editori Riuniti, 1957, wrote the following

Automation is another step towards the end of the division between manual and intellectual labour […] as automation progresses we can move forward towards a world in which all servile work, all repetitive work, all work requiring only manual skills is abolished; towards a world in which everyone will have a job that will allow them to make full use of their manual and intellectual skills

This balancing act should therefore ensure the full utilisation of manual as well as intellectual skills.

Labour Reform

In order to achieve the result expressed by Lilley, however, it is necessary to create preconditions without which the introduction of artificial intelligence risks creating imbalances, and in this sense labour reforms are essential. The Work Decree 2023 contains, for example, a section on the development of new skills. In an article in Il Sole 24 Ore, we read:

The New Skills Fund shall be increased, in the 2021-2027 programming period of the European Cohesion Policy, by resources from the National Youth, Women, Work Plan. Resources from the complementary operational programme POC SPAO may also be used to finance the New Skills Fund. The topping-up of resources (not yet quantified in the draft text) envisaged by the labour package on the Council of Ministers’ table today will be used to finance the agreements signed as of 2023 pursuant to paragraph 1 of the aforementioned Article 88 of Decree-Law No. 34 of 2020. The understandings are aimed at fostering the upgrading of workers’ professionalism as a result of the digital and ecological transition. With the resources of the New Skills Fund, part of the hourly wage is financed, in addition to the social security and welfare contributions of the working time allocated to training courses.

However, the main problem is the creation of a strong fabric of cooperation between the state and the world of industry and business. Without it, the conditions for this redevelopment will hardly be in place.

Conclusions

To attribute to Artificial Intelligence a role that it does not deserve is to risk failing the objective. If we want to avert the risk of an imbalance in the introduction of such technology into the world of work, we need to make sure that the work environment is ready to reinvest the resources raised by the various fields. Imagining that it is technology that will solve this problem is therefore wrong, as well as unrealistic: it is a competence that lies with politics and the industrial fabric of the country. However, the goal must be an increase in the quality of life of the worker, both in economic terms and in terms of opportunities. Without this, the labour supply will not be competitive and will not find an adequate response from workers. Finally, it is worth noting that even today we are used to measuring the quality of work by the term ‘productivity’, i.e. by the profit generated by company production. Production generates profit, profit generates economic revenue. The higher the revenue, the higher the profit, the higher the productivity, the healthier the company… or maybe not.

The term productivity does not take into account the organisational climate. In terms of productivity, many companies can be considered healthy, as their balance sheets are in the black, but so were the cotton mills that mass-produced cotton in 1870: with shifts of 12-16 hours a day, where even children aged 12-16 worked.

Even today there is still a difficulty in understanding the true concept of ‘organisational climate’; there are few Italian companies that distinguish themselves on this level (see Ferrero, Luxottica and a few others). In most cases, even when corporate wealth is undisputed, there are low wages and working conditions that do not produce well-being and professional qualifications.

Author’s note

The reason why Sam Lilley’s text‘Automation and Social Progress‘ was taken as one of the sources cited was essentially due to the author’s great methodological skill. Although the book was written in 1957, it covers the essential stages of industrial automation but does not stop there. There is a whole chapter in the book called‘Towards the Automated Factory‘; if readers are thinking of the likes of Tesla, here we should bear in mind that Lilley wrote the book in 1957, well over 40 years before the birth of the American brand. Who knows what he would have thought upon seeing that sophisticated level of automatism. Sam Lilley’s book can only be found used, it is a small milestone that I recommend buying.