As the use of Artificial Intelligence (TN) increases rapidly, More workers are more worried rather than excited about her growing presence in everyday life.
This concern is not unfounded. In many countries businesses invest billions of dollars in artificial intelligence aimed at increasing efficiency.
If technology undertakes work for which workers are currently paid, this will allow for a significant reduction in wage costs for businesses. Already, some companies say they have replaced employees with artificial intelligence systems.
But there are some countries - in fact one country - that found a way to make younger workers not concerned. South Korea.
Some of its largest companies are booming due to global demand for chips and data centers.
Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, its leading chip manufacturers, have both surpassed $1 trillion in market capitalization. And because these companies have strong unions, their employees ensure a share of the increase in profits.
When Artificial Intelligence distributes its profits to employees
In May, for example, Samsung and its syndicate reached a profit-sharing agreement, which is expected to award memory chip workers, an average bonus of nearly $400,000.
No wonder South Korea is one of the few major countries where the optimists for Artificial Intelligence outnumber the pessimists, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center.
But history has something more, according to Financial Times analysis. South Korea has long been an economy with deep faults: among the «internal» with certain jobs in large, productive companies and «External» with precarious jobs in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
So far, the benefits of Artificial Intelligence seem to follow and even deepen these faults. The agreement to participate in Samsung's profits, for example, does not benefit the employees of the company's subcontractors, who usually receive lower wages and less security.
Then there are those «external» They have not yet found a place in the labour market. A study of administrative data by economists Jinsu Han and Samil Oh of the Bank of Korea found that 211,000 youth jobs (age 15 to 29) have disappeared over the past three years, while employment for workers aged 50 was increased by 209,000 in the same period.
Young people's employment declined particularly sharply in the areas exposed to Artificial Intelligence: by 11.2% in computer programming and system integration and management, 20.4% in publications, 8.8% in professional services and 23.8% in information services.
The conclusion of economists
Economists concluded that the labour market «subject to a technological change based on antiquity»Because the Artificial Intelligence «replaces more easily work carried out by younger workers based on coded knowledge of manuals, while tending to enhance work requiring implicit knowledge based on career and social or interpersonal skills, which are more common among older workers».
There is evidence that this pattern «prejudice due to antiquity» It also appears in the US, especially in the software industry. However, trends in South Korea seem particularly pronounced.
Is this a warning to other economies? Maybe it is. But labour market structures «from the inside out» South Korea has probably also played a role.
«Trapped in a vicious circle»
Jiyeun Chang, a senior researcher at the Korean Institute of Labor, says that «active workers in large enterprises enjoy strong employment protection, so when businesses adapt to new technology, the adjustment disproportionately burdenes the recruitment margin – that is, young people trying to enter».
Indeed, young people in South Korea faced difficulties in the labour market even before ChatGPT was released at the end of 2022.
An OECD report that year found that the large companies that once led to job creation were turning to «a mixture of products with greater capital and technology intensity» and based more on outsourcing, but that graduates who failed to get hired by large companies or the public sector tended to «Waiting in line for such jobs rather than covering labour shortages in SMEs».
Meanwhile, the media was «trapped in a vicious circle»: were not productive enough to offer good wages and therefore were unable to attract high-quality workers who could enhance productivity.
The good news for South Korea is that the government has money to spare thanks to increasing tax revenue from the boom of semiconductors.
Draws plans for a «Future Response Fund» to invest in large projects, address inequality and provide employment support for people aged twenty and thirty.
One choice...
An obvious option would be to use part of the unexpected money to subsidise companies to recruit and train young people, even if their work cannot be easily valued until they gain more expertise.
A more imaginative political agenda could extend security, education and capital to «external» people like self-employed people.
Under the appropriate circumstances, could South Korean technologically trained youths not create their own companies using Artificial Intelligence to do new things?
Νεοσύστατες επιχειρήσεις που θα μπορούσαν μια μέρα να ανατρέψουν ακόμη και εκείνους τους εταιρικούς κολοσσούς που τους στέρησαν το ένα πόδι στην πόρτα;
Οι νέες εποχές απαιτούν νέα αξιολόγηση. Για τους νέους που δυσκολεύονται να προσληφθούν με τον παραδοσιακό τρόπο, αυτό μπορεί να καταλήξει να είναι δικό τους: αν δεν μπορείς να τους ακολουθήσεις, νίκησέ τους.
