Clyde McQueen arrived in Kansas City 38 years ago not knowing how to operate a computer.As the then-new CEO of the Full Employment Council of Kansas City, he needed to get a handle on the technology on his desk.“I had to learn how to do this stuff — work the computer,” McQueen told The Beacon via Zoom. “I had to go back to training, as a CEO, at a community college on my own. … Now I can do it.” McQueen said he had to continually learn new technology just to stay up to date with the ever-evolving workforce. Today’s workers, he said, also need constant learning and skill refinement as they see the disruptive rise in generative artificial intelligence models like ChatGPT.
“You’ve gotta keep your skills up to compete in the market,” McQueen said. “You can’t use the same oil in your car for a year — you’ve got to change the oil to not wear your pistons out. We’ve all got to update and change.” In Kansas City and beyond, AI is transforming work with a combination of automation and augmentation. Automation is when an AI can fully complete a task, and AI augmentation is when a human and AI work in tandem.
Jobs have started disappearing in information services, professional and business services, and office and administrative support sectors as automation and AI-assisted work have increased productivity, reducing the need for workers. Meanwhile new, but so far fewer, positions emerge in AI development and data center construction and maintenance.
AI disruption has started
More than 40,000 workers in Kansas City work in the 10 largest occupations most susceptible to AI automation, according to a recent analysis from Jasmine Escalera at MyPerfectResume. The career expert used data from Microsoft’s Working with AI study and cross-referenced it with occupational and employment wage statistics in the Kansas City area to reach that conclusion.The analysis found customer service representatives to be the most vulnerable to AI in Kansas City. There are 23,750 customer service workers in the area, and 44% of their daily tasks could potentially be automated.Escalera told The Beacon that doesn’t necessarily mean that 44% of customer service workers will lose their jobs. People will still be needed for escalated customer service issues. But she wasn’t surprised to see customer service representatives as the most vulnerable vocation since automated systems have been used by many companies for years now.“One of my biggest irritations in life is trying to get to a customer service rep and never speaking to an actual human,” Escalera said. “We’ve been seeing the slow evolution and change of the customer service space, and we will be seeing continued impact there.”Escalera’s analysis also found that white-collar service jobs are vulnerable to AI. Roughly 17,000 Kansas City workers like financial advisers, management analysts, public relations specialists and web developers all have at least 35% of their tasks that are potentially automatable…