The Mythical AI-Month
The classic book The Mythical Man-Month, published in 1975, covers the dynamics of human labor in a conventional work environment which predates all of modern technology. Many of the points still hold true today. For instance, it explained if a task requires 12 man-months, it doesn’t necessarily mean that one can assign 12 men to do the job in one month. Complex tasks have dependencies, communication overhead, and coordination requirements, making it impossible to simply add more people to accelerate a delayed project. In fact, adding more people to an already late project can make it even later. You’ve likely heard someone say, “Nine women cannot make a baby in a month.” This statement illustrates this primary concept of the book perfectly.
Since 1975 much has changed. Not only are there a lot more women in the job market, the overhead of dependencies, communication and coordination has been decreased considerably. We’ve long since replaced most processes which used paper forms with websites which transmit details instantly with an immediate response. We also use tools like Slack to communicate continually with many other people no matter their location. And even on Slack there are bots which assist with automating many tasks, such as triaging issues automatically to the right team or person. Now we are well on our way to taking this even further with AI, but will it destroy jobs for humans? What can we do if technology makes our workplace entirely unrecognizable?
Induced Demand, Inverted
We can look at this dilemma using the concept of Induced Demand. This is a well-known problem with traffic congestion. When there is a lot of heavy traffic on a road the natural impulse is to add more lanes. Intuitively that should solve the problem. Initially traffic flows more smoothly but quite soon it is back to the same level of congestion as before, making all costs sunk into construction a waste of money. This happens because people decide to take more trips when they expect traffic won’t be as bad. It demonstrates that demand will increase as the availability of the resource increases.
But how does this relate to AI and human labor? The problem of Induced Demand is inverted when it comes to automating work. If AI can be used to speed up the work being done while reducing cost it can increase demand, but in this scenario the outcome is not increased traffic congestion. Instead the result is more demand for the work you do. Essentially, more clients find their budgets fit and come knocking at your door.
Let’s consider Tracy, a professional photographer. When she started her career in the 90’s she had film cameras with all kinds of fancy lenses. At one point she’d book a photo shoot for a client, bring along all her equipment, including lighting and many rolls of film. Once the shoot was over she’d develop every roll of film and manually select the negatives with the best shots to blow up into photos. And if there were some shots they really needed but none really turned out right, then another shoot had to be scheduled. This work was rather costly and time consuming. The cost of doing another shoot was also high.
In the late 90’s digital photography started to emerge. It was already possible to have film developed and get digital copies on a compact disk or create your own digital copies with a scanner, but a digital camera could skip all those steps and save a lot of time and money. It was very new technology, but Tracy knew she had to learn how to use it and start offering it to her clients. She found that the resolution of the early digital cameras was quite low, but she could stitch several photos together to create a much higher resolution photo for large prints, and so she became proficient with Adode PhotoShop. Within a few years cameras improved considerably and her clients were very happy with her work. She no longer had to spend the time developing film and could instantly review every photo during a photo shoot so she would not have to reschedule another one after film was developed. While her workflow had changed in many ways, she was still leveraging many of her skills that earned her the reputation she had as a skilled and talented photographer.
Now new tools which leverage AI have been released. Adobe Firefly is now a part of Tracy’s toolset. The photos captured from shoot can be edited more quickly. She can even change some details, like the color of a shirt, in mere seconds. The outcome has improved in less time at a lower cost.
There are multiple concepts which support improved outcomes when technology is leveraged. Along with these concepts we’ll follow along with Tracy to see how she adapts to take advantage of each concept.
Jevons Paradox
Jevons Paradox states that as technological improvements increase the efficiency with which a resource is used, total consumption of that resource may increase, rather than decrease. This concept was initially observed in the context of coal consumption during the 19th century. Applied to AI, as tasks become more efficient, the demand for those tasks might increase rather than decrease, leading to more work rather than less.
For our friend Tracy, the photographer, a family photo shoot was priced at $1000 using conventional techniques she had been using for years which take a considerable amount of time and effort. Only a small number of families can afford these rates. Using a collection to AI enabled tools Tracy is able to introduce efficiencies and lower her costs. Tracy passes on those saving to her clients and updates her website with the new rates. Now it takes a fraction of the time and effort and she is able to charge half the former rate which expands her potential reach to more customers. She starts to bring in more clients, leading to higher monthly revenue and more happy customers who tell friends and family about her work. Her business expands.
Economic Multiplier Effect
This principle states that an increase in economic activity in one sector of the economy can lead to increased activity in other sectors. When AI reduces costs and increases productivity in one sector, the savings and profits can be reinvested, potentially leading to job growth in other areas or even the same area but in different capacities.
With increased revenue Tracy has invested in new tools. Now she has a GoPro and DJI drone that she includes in the packages she offers. She can mount the GoPro to the family dog during wedding to capture some fun moments and put the drone up to capture a bird’s eye view of the wedding reception with the sunset in the background. These additional options bring in even more revenue and create some breathtaking photos and videos for Tracy’s clients. She really starts to stand out as one of the best photographers in her area.
Comparative Advantage
This is an economic principle that explains why it’s beneficial for countries to trade with each other, even if one country is better at producing everything. With AI, humans can focus on tasks where they have a comparative advantage over machines, such as creativity, empathy, or complex problem-solving, leading to a shift in job roles rather than a decrease in job numbers.
Tracy has a really good eye and is able to capture moments of very touching memories. She can fill up her digital storage with thousands of photos quickly without incurring any additional cost like conventional film photography. The moment an opportunity arises Tracy is able to quickly start snapping photos and recording video with the perfect vantage point. But not every photo will be perfect. Someone will blink at the wrong time or a hair will cross their face. This is the perfect task for AI to touch up the photos quickly. And since she rapidly shoots many photos each second she may even capture one when the subject’s eyes are not closed and the AI can select the ones which don’t even need correction. This can all be done for her in seconds by her computer.
Complementarity Principle
Some technologies are complements to labor rather than substitutes. For instance, AI can handle routine data analysis, while humans interpret and make strategic decisions based on that analysis. This can lead to more specialized roles where humans work alongside AI tools to achieve more than either could alone.
After a long day at a wedding Tracy now had thousands of photos but will only include the best photos with the package the client purchased. The AI can quickly review each of the photos and surface the best ones. With digital cameras it is easy to take a lot of photos and later discard the ones that do not make the cut. Quickly narrowing down the selection is a great way for AI to save time and reduce cost to the client.
Innovation and Job Creation Cycle
Historically, every major technological advancement, from the steam engine to the internet, has initially been met with fears of massive job losses. However, these technologies also led to the creation of new industries and jobs that were previously unimaginable. Similarly, AI might give rise to entirely new professions and industries.
In the mid-90’s Tracy offered packages which would result in a great photo book with 30 wedding photos which captured the ceremony, tossing the bouquet, the first bite of the cake and the wedding party. Now Tracy offers an entire website and archiving service for all photos and videos captured on the wedding day. The website and cloud storage services generate additional revenue for Tracy. She no longer just produces a photo book and partners with others to support the websites and cloud storage.
Network Effects
As more people or entities adopt a technology, the value of the technology increases for both new and existing users. For AI, as more sectors adopt it and integrate it into their workflows, new opportunities for collaboration, integration, and innovation may emerge, potentially leading to new job roles or enhancing existing ones.
Tracy is not a web designer and does not know much about cloud storage so she partners with others to handle these services that she includes in her packages. She keeps her focus on what she does well and leverages new technologies to continue to become more efficient. Her partners do the same and also pass along the cost savings to her. Her clients benefit from lower prices and she is able to reach more customers who can afford her services. She and her partners also expand what they can offer.
Skill Augmentation
Instead of replacing humans, AI can be viewed as augmenting human skills. As AI tools become more sophisticated, workers can be upskilled to operate in tandem with these tools, similar to how a pilot operates an airplane with automation.
Tracy is often asked if she has photos of specific guests. She can use facial recognition to train her system to identify people in each of the photos she’s put into cloud storage. Each photo can then be labeled so the website can be used to browse photos by each person’s name. If the selection shown on the website is missing anyone who is in the archived photos Tracy can bring them in so they are included with just a few clicks of her mouse.
The AI does not just identify people. It can also tag other details, such as the photos with the cake, dancing, pets or children so visitors to the website can search for the photos they want to see. These features would take Tracy many days to put together and would never be offered in any of her packages, but now it is automatically included in every package. Not only that, guests at the wedding can order prints and high resolution digital copies of photos they select for a fee, giving Tracy another source of revenue. Tracy has now expanded her role well beyond what she once did as a professional photographer yet she is actually doing less manual work. Her customers are also getting so much more value from her. She is still enjoying what got her into this career and she’s thriving along with her business partners.
Final Thoughts
Our jobs will change but we can change with them, just like Tracy has done since the 90's. If she insisted she’d only shoot with film cameras and never adopt any new technologies she’d miss out on many opportunities and likely would not have as many clients reaching out to her. She also is able to do the part of the work she enjoys the most, which is capturing all those moments with her cameras and interacting with people during the most important moments of their lives. She may feel nostalgic about the way film photography was different but she’s making a good living and can still do film photography anytime she wants. We can do the same. We can find ways to adapt as technologies change our jobs and thrive.
