Amid AI uncertainty in Washington and Florida, human connections still support jobs

Trinity Delacruz misses the old days of writing emails from scratch without AI input.

This summer, the recent graduate is interning in the sales department of a cybersecurity company in North Texas. She said AI is becoming harder to avoid in daily work, as transcription and summarization agents appear in meetings and in inboxes.

“You have to shape your voice so it doesn’t sound robotic,” Delacruz said. She also said she was concerned about the impact AI would have on the environment and critical thinking skills.

Delacruz majored in business administration with a focus on marketing. She said colleagues told her it was “risky” to pursue this career now, given the acceleration of automation in digital marketing. She is currently considering field marketing, which involves more direct interaction, such as pop-up product demonstrations at trade shows.

“It makes me feel a little bit better because I get to work with people,” Delacruz said.

According to one study, about one in five jobs in the D-FW area has high exposure to AI. dallas morning news Hearst Devhub analyzes employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and research from researchers at OpenAI and the University of Pennsylvania. As AI continues to reshape work, the human aspects of work may become more important, workers, employers and experts said.

Related: These D-FW jobs have the most exposure to AI. How does your profession stack up?

“As AI takes more automatable and technical tasks out of our jobs, we will be left doing what humans do best: talking to each other and collaborating,” said Anna Crockett, senior advisor for regional development at the Dallas Fed.

Rapid advances in AI are likely to open up more areas to automation and cause anxiety for workers, but experts don’t see widespread replacement so far, Crockett said.

“Many employers, businesses and employees are still feeling anxious,” she said. “I can’t say we’ve seen evidence of any major material changes as far as employment is concerned.”

She says it will take time for clear trends to emerge from the data. At the individual level, AI replacement may be occurring, and in a few years researchers may find that AI has indeed contributed to the Great Replacement.

There have been several high-profile mass layoffs in the tech industry this year, affecting thousands of employees at dozens of companies. Many commentators and some business executives cite AI and new technologies as one of the drivers.

But Sammy Abdullah, managing director at Dallas-based venture capital firm Blossom Street Ventures, cautioned against blaming AI for these layoffs. His company focuses on enterprise-level AI software companies.

“Software has been overhired in response to COVID-19,” Abdullah said. “You’re using AI as a shield to say, ‘Oh, Claude is doing what they[can do]so we’re going to let go of a significant portion of our workforce.'”

Instead, Abdullah said, AI can augment work, allowing employees to perform mundane tasks more efficiently and freeing up their time for more meaningful work.

One local example is WhitegloveAI. Frisco’s transportation department is currently testing one of the company’s AI voice agents to eventually handle calls from the public. Founder Nick James said the tool saves Frisco traffic engineers about 20 hours a week.

“For our customers, it usually, and probably always will, provide peace of mind to their existing employees,” James said.

James said that won’t always be the case, predicting that employees who don’t know how to use AI to enhance their jobs will be replaced at some point. During the hiring process, he said he is looking for new employees who can creatively integrate AI into their workflows. On the other hand, candidates who perceive AI as a threat are less likely to get the job.

This could be a sign of growing sentiment among D-FW employers. More businesses across North Texas are planning to incorporate AI into their operations, according to the Census Bureau’s biweekly Business Trends and Outlook Survey. As of November, fewer than 19% of respondents said they planned to use AI in their business within the next six months. By the end of June, that number had increased to nearly 29%.

Related: Texas universities offer degrees in AI. Could it be the answer to a changing workforce?

In Abdullah’s view, advancements in AI may be crowding out entry-level employees. That’s because the technology is good at automating many tasks typically assigned to younger employees.

“Recruitment has slowed down, especially for new graduates, who require a lot of training,” he said.

According to the New York Fed, as of March, the unemployment rate for new college graduates aged 22 to 27 in the United States was 5.6%. This rate has not been this high since the beginning of 2021.

But Crockett said the role of AI in current employment conditions is less clear. Even before new AI tools and models were developed, the job market remained “low hiring and low layoffs,” she said. Some economists argue that remote work also plays a role.

Wendy Wilburn, president and CEO of Tech Titans, said AI’s biggest impact in D-FW’s technology sector is in entry-level jobs in quality assurance, technical writing, and user support. New technologies have led to both downsizing and changes in employment and training.

Related: Young job hunters are looking for an edge. These students say this is it.

One difficulty Wilburn observed for new graduates is that companies often don’t provide clear AI goals.

“You can’t train for it because you can’t define it,” she says. This leaves young workers unsure of what AI skills to acquire.

Stephen O’Neill, head of account management at software consulting firm Capshar, said AI is also creating an arms race between job seekers and recruiters. O’Neill also chairs the Tech Titans AI Forum.

He said people are using AI tools to fine-tune and send resumes all at once, leading to a surge in applications for recruiters to sift through. As a result, employers are also using more automated methods to weed out candidates.

“Unfortunately, this creates a difficult situation where applicants are caught up in a barrage of attacks,” O’Neill said. “And they’re not necessarily asking themselves about their technical capabilities, they’re asking themselves, ‘Am I doing tricks to beat the system?’

Wilburn predicts that changes affecting the technology industry will spill over into other sectors as well.

“Every company today is essentially a technology company at heart,” she said.

Ahmed Alhanafi, a passenger service assistant at DFW Airport, said AI is starting to impact him and his colleagues. Al Hanafi has worked at DFW for 15 years helping passengers who require wheelchair services and unaccompanied minors board flights.

Al-Hanafi said some airports have recently introduced electronic ticketing gates, which could reduce the number of gate agents. Self-driving wheelchairs are also making their way through new testing programs.

But Al Hanafi echoes Dela Cruz and Crockett’s view of the advantages humans have over AI systems. His passengers can instruct him to stop for a meal. They ask about Dallas, DFW Airport, and local restaurants. And he reacts in a way that machines cannot, at least for now.

“We don’t just take them from gate to gate,” Al Hanafi said. “It’s not dry. It’s emotion.”