Workers grappling with the rapid growth of artificial intelligence have said they feel \u201cdevalued\u201d by the technology and warned of a downward trajectory in the quality of work.<\/p>\n
Recent analysis by the International Monetary Fund found AI would affect about 40% of jobs<\/a> around the world. Its head, Kristalina Georgieva, has said: \u201cThis is like a tsunami hitting the labour market<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Workers who have trained AI models to replace some or all of their roles tell the Guardian about their experiences.<\/p>\n The editor<\/p>\n \u2018I now earn less while working longer correcting the mistakes of AI editors\u2019<\/p>\n Christie* edits papers for academics for whom English is a second language. She was asked to take part in a project to train new \u201cassistant editors\u201d, unaware that it was an AI programme that would lead to her being paid less.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a huge shortage of qualified editors, so I assumed they were training up more [people] to take some of the load,\u201d says Christie, 55, who lives in the UK. \u201cThen they got me to correct the mistakes of these assistant editors. But the new editors were making strange mistakes, like inserting unnecessary full stops or changing the names of countries to nonsense.\u201d<\/p>\n Christie says she \u201cmeticulously and respectfully pointed out these errors\u201d.<\/p>\n However, the errors kept happening and \u201csometimes they got worse\u201d. Then, a few months later, she found out who \u201cthe editors\u201d were.<\/p>\n \u201cIn a newsletter, the company admitted that these assistant editors were actually an AI,\u201d says Christie. \u201cGoing forward, all jobs would be pre-edited by it, and our fee would be reduced, so I now earn less money for correcting the mistakes of an AI, which takes me longer than editing from scratch.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is this groupthink in the company that they must implement AI.\u201d<\/p>\n Christie says she feels \u201cdevalued, betrayed, and furious at this company\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cI prioritise work from any other sources, but I am trapped in this toxic cycle, as they have the highest volume of work, and I still need to eat and pay rent. But a lot of people have quit,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n The palliative care consultant<\/p>\n \u2018AI struggled with patients\u2019 pronunciation\u2019<\/p>\n Mark Taubert, a palliative care consultant and professor, said he was excited to work on a pilot chatbot project to explore how technology could help patients navigate the complexities of metastatic cancer and palliative care.<\/p>\n Taubert, 51, who works at Velindre University NHS trust in Cardiff, was recorded over \u201cseveral hours\u201d for the chatbot and fed the computer with guidelines that would typically inform how he talks to patients.<\/p>\n \u201cWe asked patients to write down all their questions, and added patient information leaflets that we had previously written and agreed on,\u201d he says. \u201cWe also considered questions I might get from my palliative care community of outpatients and inpatients, such as, \u2018Can I drink alcohol when I am taking morphine?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The chatbot was mostly aimed at home patients who might have a question, for example about their medication, out of hours.<\/p>\n Taubert says the chatbot got about \u201c50% spot on, in a way similar to how I might have responded\u201d, but it struggled with the vagaries of human pronunciation and human error.<\/p>\n Mark Taubert, a palliative care consultant and professor, says he does not feel as though his role is threatened by AI. Photograph: Handout<\/p>\n \u201cPatients don\u2019t always use perfect English and sometimes use incorrect names for medications, for instance, they may say \u2018morphium\u2019, instead of morphine,\u201d he says. \u201cPeople also structured their questions quite differently. We saw a need for the technology to learn about human misspellings, dialects, jargon, variations and accents.<\/p>\n \u201cSubsequent adaptations made the system safer, but we also had to consider how the machine would respond if a patient typed in a more troubling question, for instance, how to end their own life.\u201d<\/p>\n The chatbot, called Rita, was used for a time \u201cwith a lot of caveats and warnings around it\u201d before funding ended, says Taubert.<\/p>\n \u201cWe would say: \u2018Give this a try if you want to,\u2019 but we also put in links to the hospital information leaflets on each area,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n While Taubert is open to \u201cembracing new technologies\u201d, he does not feel his role is threatened by AI.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of what we do relies on nuances of language, body language and facial expression and being in the room,\u201d he says. \u201cIn the coming months or years, perhaps my working week can be enhanced by such systems by taking away the very administrative duties and letting me actually speak to the patient more.\u201d<\/p>\n The translator<\/p>\n \u2018The overall effect is a decline in quality\u2019<\/p>\n Philip*, 45, was required to train AI-based translation engines that his supervisors \u201cwant to replace us with because they\u2019ll cost less\u201d, but says that even after four years they are still unreliable.<\/p>\n \u201cAt first, the results were inevitably laughable,\u201d he says. \u201cBut they have improved as we have corrected the programs. However, even after years of this, besides tending to produce formulaic results, they are still unreliable and inadequately accurate, so we still need to review each AI-generated translation word by word and correct as necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n Philip, who lives in New Jersey, says in his experience, \u201cit doesn\u2019t save time over directly translating the material myself. I think the overall effect is a decline in quality.\u201cIf you need a translation that is just a rough idea of what is being said, then generally AI is OK. But it is not always reliable, and that\u2019s the problem, because part of the time you will still run into things that are just completely wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n He says the moment when he will no longer be needed in his current role \u201chas been looming over our heads for years now, but we\u2019re not there yet\u201d.<\/p>\n The marketing writer<\/p>\n \u2018Training your robot replacement feels like digging your own digital grave\u2019<\/p>\n Joe*, 50, an award-winning marketing writer and content manager, says the company where he worked began exploring AI as a productivity tool at the start of 2024, but he was assured his job was safe.<\/p>\n \u201cI should have seen the writing on the wall when they had me spend the first six months of 2025 building our extensive \u2018AI process workflows\u2019 and \u2018best practices documentation\u2019. In my naivety, I thought that I would be administering this system and would be asked to oversee these processes.\u201d<\/p>\n However, in August 2025, two weeks after he handed in his best practices documentation, Joe was laid off.<\/p>\n \u201cAt my exit interview, I was told it had absolutely nothing to do with my work or performance; they blamed \u2018market conditions\u2019, and some of that was no doubt true, but the timing of it was certainly suspicious,\u201d says Joe, who lives in Milwaukee. \u201cWorking for this company and being asked to do this \u2013 training your robot replacement \u2013 feels like digging your own digital grave.\u201d<\/p>\n Joe has been told that much of his former workload has been delegated to junior employees.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are following my AI documentation to just enter prompts into AI clients in order to produce the work I used to do,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Joe is now considering a career pivot into sales, but says it has not been easy.<\/p>\n \u201cI wouldn\u2019t necessarily say that AI 100% forced me out of my career path, but at 50 and with the threat of AI looming constantly, I am thinking to myself, I could line up another writing job, but then am I looking at another layoff at 55?\u201d<\/p>\n The mathematician<\/p>\n \u2018Work will look completely different in 10 years\u2019 time, perhaps even less\u2019<\/p>\n Filippo, 44, an associate professor in mathematics, has been collaborating with two startups on AI projects.<\/p>\n They are developing models to reason about mathematics and prove theorems with very little human input, and to verify the input using the proof assistant software Lean.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been three months, and while the results are still somewhat limited, it is clear that these tools are getting stronger and more efficient by the day,\u201d says Filippo, who lives and works in France. \u201cWith most of my colleagues experimenting with this AI technology, we are convinced that a mathematician\u2019s work will look completely different in 10 years\u2019 time, or perhaps even less.<\/p>\n \u201cAI will be able to replace us in mundane tasks that occupy a large amount of our time, like proving small ancillary results needed for our larger goals. Whether mathematicians will still be needed to prove these larger ones is debatable.\u201d<\/p>\n Filippo, who works for a university, says he does not feel his role will become obsolete in the immediate future.<\/p>\n \u201cGiven that I work for a public institution, that I spend a significant amount of my time teaching and that these AI tools aren\u2019t yet at a professional research level, I do not feel any pressure or concern for my job,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I would have a completely different view if I were 25 and had just completed my PhD.\u201d<\/p>\n *Names have been changed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Workers grappling with the rapid growth of artificial intelligence have said they feel \u201cdevalued\u201d by the technology and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":501239,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-501238","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=501238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}