Do We Want to Further Degrade the Skills of the Workforce We Previously Complained Lacked Skills?

by Stacey Lett, Regional Manager – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc. ^®

The media likes to fan the AI flames with bombastic predictions of how we all have to get on board with the AI train or be left behind. My guess it is to support the AI investors who may have a stake in their media group. But reality is increasingly contradicting the lofty projections. AI will have a place as a tool for the toolbox like most over-hyped technology advancements. But in the meantime, the world is in a state of chaos while trying  to find its place in the manufactured stampede.

We are told we have to hurry the implementation of AI into all corners of life so “China doesn’t get ahead of us.” Ahead of us on what? Realizing AI’s true potential, risks and dangers? The public backlash over data centers near urban settings and the potential loss of property value, the potential increases in water and electricity prices for consumers, the depletion of scarce water resources, the environmental impacts (e.g. noise, destruction of habitats) all need to be addressed if AI data centers want to find a home, as will the many open questions of the role of humans in this AI world data centers are meant to support.

What was the point of STEM and STEAM in education if we take away the need for the learning skills these programs are meant to impart to a future workforce?

Daily, questions arise as to the truthful advantage of AI and the many risks and cautions revealed as people have time to consider applications; trying to implement AI as a better solution than what existed,  There will be a “settling out” at some point, just in time for the next disruption forced on us by those who stand to massively, financially benefit.

But where is all of this leading us? How will it affect our current and future workers? Do we really know? Is this a risk we want to chance?

Student achievement has been on a downward trend. According to the recent Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results – testing of students across the 36 OECD countries included in the study, average performance among 15-year-old students – scores were the “lowest ever recorded in all three core subjects: science, mathematics and reading”. Scores of average U.S. students mirrored this trend. Counterintuitively, the results link frequent AI usage with lower science scores. Considering AI was embedded in these schools, and student learning, the initial outcomes should concern educators and parents thinking AI usage should be pushed further and harder into education to address the often hyped notion that AI will make future workers more competitive.

Rose Horowitz, staff writer for The Atlantic, in her recent book, “The Age of Reading Is Over” warned  of the over-reliance on AI. Examining the effects of AI on our relationship to reading and writing, Horowitz argues that “what’s at risk is nothing less than the ability to think for oneself. If people become over­-reliant on AI to write for them, they could lose the capacity to interrogate or even develop their own views. These are quintessentially human capacities. ‘If we gave those up,’ the NYU philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah told me, ‘we’d stop being the kind of humans that we are. We’d be very different creatures.’”

Wharton research identifies “cognitive surrender,” a mode of thinking that emerges when employees rely on AI for decisions. In a paper titled Thinking — Fast, Slow, and Artificial: How AI is Reshaping Human Reasoning and the Rise of Cognitive Surrender, Wharton researcher Steven Shaw and professor Gideon Nave present three experiments involving more than 1,300 participants and nearly 10,000 individual trials.

They discuss the Tri-System Theory. “It builds on the work of Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, whose book Thinking, Fast and Slow popularized the idea that people think in two ways: quick gut reactions and slower, more careful reasoning. Shaw and Nave suggest that AI has introduced a third way of thinking that changes how the other two work. Their experiments also found that cognitive surrender can sneak into a workforce in ways that can be hard to predict and flag.”

While the use of AI frees up time, Glean found, workers end up using that extra time to fix its mistakes — or simply ship products they can’t stand behind:

• “Digital workers now spend nearly one full workday a week “botsitting,” according to a report recently released by Glean. This work includes everything required to make artificial intelligence usable, including checking outputs, debugging mistakes and fixing “confident-but-wrong” answers, the AI company said.
• With botsitting exhausting workers, many turn to what Glean terms “botshitting”: “shipping AI-generated work that workers haven’t reviewed, don’t fully understand, or couldn’t defend if asked.” Nearly 7 in 10 AI users admitted to this behavior, Glean found, with heavy AI users, Generation Z, men and managers most likely to engage in it.
• How can companies pull out of this cycle? Instead of focusing on quantity-heavy strategies like “tokenmaxxing,” or maximum use of AI tokens, successful companies focus on setting context, defining what “good” looks like, building judgment and other parameters related to AI use itself, Glean said.”

What was the point of STEM and STEAM in education if we take away the need for the learning skills these programs are meant to impart to a future workforce? Was that all a hoax or distraction for what was to come?

Employers, education and workforce development agencies have to reconcile these massive contractions fast, very fast, lest we lose yet another generation to a poorly designed social experiment. At a minimum, further degradation of educational institutions’ and workforce development agencies’ credibility is at stake, and another generation mislead on their potential from further efforts toward workforce preparedness.

Stacey Lett is Director of Operations, Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc. addressing entrenched worker development and management challenges. If you have shed your fear of even looking for solutions that build on established, proven precedent, check out Proactive Technologies’ structured on-the-job training approach,  The Accelerated Transfer of Expertise System™, to see how it might work at your firm, your family of facilities or your region. Contact a Proactive Technologies representative today to schedule a videoconference briefing. This can be followed-up with an onsite presentation for you and your colleagues. As always, onsite presentations can be a first step, as well.