Last week, MS (Microsoft) announced the hiring of Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of the renowned AI startup Inflection AI. This news is interesting for two reasons. Mustafa Suleyman is the founder of Google DeepMind, known to us for “AlphaGo”, and the fact that Inflection, which he has newly led, has secured $1.3 billion in investment in June last year with the goal of creating “more personalized AI”, and MS was the key investor at that time.

As is known, MS announced in November last year that it would recruit Sam Altman, the CEO of Open AI, as the head of its AI research team, just hours after he was ousted by the management. Although Altman's return to Open AI was confirmed a few days later, making it a non-issue, MS was also the largest shareholder of Open AI. This aggressive investment in Inflection and the hiring of its founder after nine months confirms MS's aggressive stance towards industry leaders. In particular, MS is investing in applying AI to consumer-friendly products such as Windows and the Bing search engine, making it another example of the need for competition to secure AI talent and the importance of developing expertise in this field.

As MS and other large technology companies are focusing on AI competitively, a natural question arises. Will AI technology take away entry-level employees' jobs? Recently, there has been a surge in discussions among parents about what is the most suitable major for their children who are about to enter college, reflecting a widespread concern about the impact of AI on future jobs.

Representative tasks where AI is already replacing manpower in the industrial field include chatbots that respond to basic customer support inquiries, sales development personnel through cold emails, and the role of junior software engineers who write basic code or fix minor errors. Considering that these tasks have historically been in high demand and suitable for entry-level positions, it is highly likely that such entry-level roles will be 100% performed by artificial intelligence in the near future. This change provides evidence to support the concerns of parents about the professional future of their children, who will soon be taking on entry-level roles, and what skills are appropriate.

However, the changes in the employment market due to the advancement of AI are not just a matter of concern. Rather, there are many possibilities that it could offer new opportunities for both skilled professionals and newcomers.

New employees generally lack a complete understanding of the structure and importance of their work, and tend to learn even seemingly unnecessary information from the ground up. This reduces the overall efficiency of the work. On the other hand, experienced employees can infer uncertain information and proceed with work by only confirming the criteria, focusing on and immersing themselves in core tasks. This means that new employees may have greater opportunities to leverage AI features to quickly approach the role of experienced employees.

New employees can accelerate their learning curve by using AI tools like ChatGPT. By asking in-depth questions about project results beforehand and simulating the entire project process, they can quickly gain insights that would normally require months or years of experience. For experienced employees, AI can reduce the burden of routine and repetitive tasks, increasing their opportunities to focus on complex and valuable core tasks. This change will not only improve productivity but also help develop expertise in areas that cannot be replaced by AI.

In an era where widespread AI integration is imminent, preparing for the changing job environment is a challenge and an opportunity. The keywords that appear most frequently in the future of AI-related work are "replacement" and "innovation". Naturally, the specific level of future changes is unpredictable. However, in terms of the individual's choices to follow that trend, it is clear that focusing on how to accelerate the existing professional growth process is a better choice than the vague anxiety that AI will replace jobs.

References

Microsoft hires Inflection founders to run new consumer AI division

Inflection lands $1.3B investment to build more ‘personal’ AI

'챗GPT의 아버지' 샘 알트먼, MS 합류…AI연구팀 이끈다⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠