I’ve been
noticing how articles about how AI, robots, or automation will impact the
future job outlook. All seem to reuse the same terms, like “disrupt”, “steal”,
or “threaten”. The thesaurus has only so many terms to go around I suppose. I
got to wondering which terms were most popular, and then how they’ve changed
over time.
So I ran some queries. My goal was not as much sentiment
tracking as it was hyperbole tracking. By hyperbole I mean the breathless,
panicky articles that tend to track progress. The worst of them bet on winners
(few and unworthy) and losers (all of us!), cherry pick the most extreme
studies that seem to prove their point, and extrapolate long straight lines
from nascent trends.
Just as Gartner tracks the hype cycles of technologies, there is
a “hyperbole cycle” for scary technologies. I first noticed it covering
“enterprise attention management” (a more actionable, business-focused version
of the “information overload” meme). 2004-05 seemed to be peak terror about
digital distractions making our caveman brains explode. A term hits the
mainstream with “sky is falling articles”, they acquire academic cred as long
time academics whose work connects to the narrative find sudden fame, then
counter-articles appear popping the bubble, and finally it settles into a low
buzz.
Which brings me back to my current work on how organizations can
planfully adopt and vendors and service providers can responsibly sell AI,
robotic, and automation technology. I wanted to see how the terms associated
with these technologies has evolved in headlines over time. I searched for all
headlines since 2013 that involved the term, work/jobs, and AI/robots/automation
(and variants – see Boring Details below). I used a scale of terms from the
neutral “transform” (which could be good or bad, and doesn’t make a statement
about losing your job) to “kill” (’nuff said). Read the next publication to
know the results !
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