I mainly write about technology in and for education. It’s kind of my thing. I have been banging around inside this world where tech and education collide for many years. And the word write above is a stretch. I certainly would consider myself mediocre at best when it comes to actually putting words to digital paper. I can barley muster a coherent email without rambling off into abstract stream of consciousness blather.

Anyways…

I have been quite interested in AI recently. I have been playing around with ChatGPT and Microsoft’s AI powered Bing. I even have a favorite AI tool called Pi.ai. It seems more friendly and polite. I have been asking AI a variety of questions, and changing my prompts (we don’t search anymore, we prompt) to see what the results will be. And to be honest, once you get past the weirdness of it all, it really seems like AI does a pretty good job of doing what it is asked. I don’t use it to help me write, although I probably should, but I have seen and spoken with a number of students that do use it to help them write. They seem to find it helpful. Most seem to like it because it helps them kick start an idea and it can provide some insight into helping them compose their ideas. It does a lot of the grunt work of essay and project tasks.

Now it’s quite well known, that AI is a technology that will probably displace a great number of white collar jobs in our society. I know nothing about accounting, but it seems to me that if you feed an AI what the tax rules and exemptions are for your small business, along with the tax jurisdiction that you are in, it can probably manage the whole process from your invoicing of customers all the way to filing your taxes for you and ensuring you have all the possible tax exemptions to go with it.

Likewise, how long is it until we stop calling our banks and investment advisors and simply open up an app on our phones, deposit $100.00 into an investment trading account and tell AI that we want to have $1,000,000 in that account when we turn 65. GO. ( This is, of course, fraught with all kinds of horrible possibilities. Being singularly purposeful on achieving the end task, perhaps your invest AI app realizes that it can drain the bank account of the local nursing home, take all that money, cover it’s tracks with layers of distraction, put the money into Bitcoin, wash it though a shady crypto exchange, sell the Bitcoin and move the cash into your retirement savings plan. $1,000,000 as requested and it only took 3 days. Happy Retirement.)

And lawyers. Whenever we talk about AI replacing jobs, we always talk about law clerks being outsourced to the firms AI which can read and deliver 11 billion past case articles in 5 seconds to the lawyer, neatly organized in a very easy to follow pattern.

So this article from Bloomberg was an interesting take on AI and the white collar worker. ¹ In most organizations like accounting firms, consulting firms, investment banks and Law firms, junior associates are hired to toil away at preparing notes, presentations, gathering research, etc.. to assist the partners of these firms. It’s a white collar apprentice program that has been in place for many years. The young hires work, research and learn, finally making their way up the corporate ladder to become partners in the firm where they can hire young university and college grads to apprentice under them. BUT, if AI is dramatically reducing the need for these young hires who gain work and life experience through toiling till late hours of the evening, who do we have that has the experience to eventually take over the partner roles?

And this is not only happening in large firms. It’s happening on a smaller scale in small businesses across the country. Small business owners need an exit plan. They want to retire some day. They hire young people to work with them for years. Learn the ropes of the business. Learn about the customers. Understand the business so that they can be in a place to buy or take over the day to day operations of these small businesses. But the reality of course for many small business owners is that AI can accomplish many of the same tasks that a young hire can do, at a fraction of the cost. And cost is VERY important to small business.

So how does this affect us in education? There is of course the obvious. If junior white collar apprenticeships are no longer a really viable option for those students who have dreamed about a life in investment banking, working at a large accounting firm, or being a partner in a law firm, what does post secondary look like for them? Is it an option? Is the end game with it simply student debt and unemployment. What role does K-12 have in this system? What does K-12 look like? Do we focus on building small business owners? What does that mean for our courses we offer? Why would I take accounting in high school when my AI accounting app on the phone just handles all the details for me? Why do I need advanced math’s and computer sciences when ChatGPT writes and checks the code anyways? Why become an engineer or an architect when AI designs the building and bridges? Besides, all the companies that used to hire dozens of junior white collar apprentices, now hire virtually none. And the small business owner in my community that used to employ 4 young hires a year, now hires none.

And let’s be honest. Not everyone wants to be a plumber, or an electrician or carpenter. There are students in our schools that are really well suited for those roles. They enjoy tech and shop classes at high school. And we will always need those young women and men to actually build the houses. Fix the machinery in our factories.

The issue facing us in education may very well be that our students are increasingly becoming aware that the world outside of high school may not need their skills. When our students become disillusioned about what comes after grade 12, they are likely to become increasingly hopeless. What AI is doing is that it is now starting to affect that large population of students in our schools who have planned on pursuing that white collar career path. As it removes roles from our society, and our students watch their parents and family members become replaced with AI, they can clearly see that opportunities for them are becoming increasingly limited. And it is going to be the K-12 school systems that are going to have to figure out how to deal with it.

We know that a very large population of white collar employees are going to be the most affected with the increased advances in AI. Perhaps it’s time we start thinking of the children of this population that are also going to be negatively affected before they even get the chance to leave high school.

1. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-04/ai-could-shave-years-off-path-to-partner-at-law-firms-big-four?utm_source=website&utm_medium=share&utm_campaign=copy Accessed December 5th, 2023 ↩︎