Massive staff reductions are under way at Mitsubishi Electric Corp., Panasonic Holdings Corp. and other major companies.
One of the underlying causes for the restructuring is thought to be how advancements in artificial intelligence have fundamentally changed the way people work.
Kazuhiko Toyama, the chair of Japan Platform of Industrial Transformation Inc., warns against the “extinction of white-collar workers.”
According to Toyama, there are two major groups who can survive the AI era: competent managers who can make full use of AI to make global judgments and accurate decisions; and blue-collar workers with effective interpersonal skills.
In an interview with The Asahi Shimbun, Toyama also says that the AI era offers a great opportunity to reflect on the true nature of jobs that must be performed by humans.
Excerpts of the interview follow:
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Question: Do you think white-collar jobs will disappear as AI becomes widespread?
Toyama: In the short term, programmers and other white-collar IT workers will be replaced by AI at the fastest pace.
They will be followed by rule-based workers, such as those engaged in back-office operations (sales support and control) for general affairs and marketing divisions.
Even accountants and lawyers will be no match for AI when it comes to performing search and analysis of secondary information to find judicial precedents and theories.
In addition, middle managers, who account for a large number of employees at companies, will also be put in a very difficult position because they face competition from AI.
Q: What kind of workers can survive the AI era?
A: They are roughly divided into two types: “capable bosses” who make full use of AI as their “super subordinate” and give prompts to AI to make judgments and appropriate decisions from a global perspective; and blue-collar workers who use their own body, emotions and skills to obtain “firsthand information.”
They include those in sales positions with high emotional labor demands who meet face to face with clients and make meticulous and strenuous efforts to win their hearts, as well as management consultants required to have counseling abilities.
BLUE-COLLAR BILLIONAIRES
Q: There is an increasing number of college graduates who choose blue-collar careers in the United States, and, particularly, “blue-collar billionaires” who make high earnings create such a buzz. Do you think Japan will follow the same path?
A: It definitely will.
In fact, wages for front-line workers will inevitably increase even more due to a balance between supply and demand because Japan is suffering from a more serious labor shortage than the United States.
As it stands, highly skilled heavy machinery operators and highly placed workers at construction sites are already making more than 10 million yen ($63,000) a year.
With workers in tourism and other sectors also seeing their wages rise, a new “middle class” will be formed by qualified workers in the essential industries, as well as those who have special qualifications and techniques for jobs in an intermediate realm between the white-collar and the blue-collar jobs.
Q: Do you mean that the white-collar middle class, which has made up the largest segment in society, is falling apart?
A: After all, the social model with the notion of “white-collar workers constituting the middle class” at its center was merely a temporary idea made up during the information-communication revolution in the late 20th century.
It was blue-collar workers working at factories of Toyota Motor Corp. and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. (present-day Panasonic Corp.) that made up Japan’s rich middle class during the rapid economic growth period in the Showa Era (1926-1989).
And now, because of the AI revolution, non-productive white-collar tasks known as “bullshit jobs” (meaningless jobs) will be performed by AI, while wealth flows into high-value interpersonal services and labor-intensive industries.
It can also be said that it is an example of historical inevitability.
Q: There are widespread concerns among middle-aged and older managers. Do you have any concrete advice for them?
A: They must swallow their pride and try working in front-line capacities.
For instance, obtaining a heavy machinery operator’s license and working as large bus and taxi drivers are promising alternatives. Their annual incomes are also high.
There is also data that show drivers and other workers in their 60s actually cause the fewest accidents and are highly productive.
Q: I think many people are perplexed by the transition from desk work.
A: For example, if circumstances permit, it is also a good idea to start a side job in distribution or do other front-line jobs on a trial basis on weekends.
There are increasing cases where their aptitudes are recognized and they are lured away for higher wages.
It would be overwhelmingly fulfilling to deal with customers face to face, be of their service and receive words of gratitude, rather than working in the office to perform seemingly thankless tasks as a cog of a large corporation.
The AI era offers a great opportunity to reflect on the true nature of jobs that must be performed by humans.
CHANGES IN REPORTING, COLLEGE, RECRUITMENT
Q: How do you think AI will change the jobs of reporters?
A: Reporters who pound the pavement and score scoops (breaking stories) will remain needed.
That is because AI can instantly analyze past reports and data, but it can’t obtain new, firsthand information.
Meanwhile, news desk duties, such as structuring and editing stories, and managerial tasks will be eventually performed by AI. The same goes for consultants.
I’d recommend reporters to go back to pounding the pavement and scoring scoops.
Q: Do you think Japan’s current college education system can function when the social structure is drastically changing?
A: Faculties of medical, veterinary medicine, pharmaceutical sciences and others that teach practical science are functioning, but others are barely so.
In particular, humanities faculties at private schools, which have grown in number in the past 20 years, have ended up becoming a “mass production system for unnecessary white-collar workers.”
Half of Japan’s universities must stop playing the game of teaching high-minded academics and shift toward providing skill training programs like in Europe.
By right, no correct answers are found in the liberal arts, which are meant to show better ways of living.
They can only be obtained when we experience extreme relationships at work, confront dilemmas, come face-to-face with different views of life and death while giving nursing care or are thrown into other difficult circumstances.
They can’t be easily acquired when we just study (Immanuel) Kant or (William) Shakespeare in college classrooms.
Q: Do you think companies will change their recruitment strategies?
A: The seniority-based lifetime employment system, under which fresh and obedient students are employed en masse upon graduation and are taken care of for the rest of their lives, will completely collapse.
Companies can’t afford to take care of students without skills or self-reliance.
From now on, students must take a realistic attitude and think that they are merely receiving job training while getting paid for the first three to four years, and launch startups or carve out other career paths on their own once they obtain skills irreplaceable by AI.