Generative AI chatbot, ChatGPT, burst into public life in November 2022 and has since come under much praise and arguably much more scrutiny. Issues surrounding dissemination of fake news, copyright infringement, ethics and so on have rocked the boat for one of the global leaders of this technology.
In an earnest interview with The Atlantic, OpenAI’s CEO and mastermind behind ChatGPT gave a chilling account of how he thinks the technology will change the world.
Altman doesn’t hold back, as he says with certainty some jobs will become redundant when AI is able to take over certain tasks to the same standard as humans, but still claims he has no regrets about creating the AI tool.
Altman Adds Pinch of Salt to AI Optimism
In The Atlantic interview, Altman calls fake news on the idea experts are sharing that AI chatbots will be a sort of assistant to discerning professionals who choose to embrace AI and gain efficiencies on their co-workers who do not.
Altman suggests that those who are intent on seeing AI as a supplement rather than a replacement for jobs, are likely to be in for a nasty surprise. In the interview, Altman confirms that in his opinion. jobs will definitely ‘go away’ as a direct result of AI.
However, Altman was not short of praise for his organization’s creation, in fact he describes the development of AI as having potential to provide the “most tremendous leap forward” for people’s quality of life. He adds that he expects better — perhaps higher-paying jobs — will be created in place of the ones that are disrupted.
Which Jobs are Likely to be Affected?
For now, it seems that the experts were right in saying that AI will only automate certain tasks but workers should consider how they might want to adapt their skillset for when their job becomes fully automated by AI in the future.
A June 2023 a McKinsey report stated that generative AI would automate 60% to 70% of employee workloads. The same report estimates that generative AI’s impact on productivity could add trillions of dollars in value to the global economy.
About 75 percent of the value that generative AI use cases could deliver falls across four areas: Customer operations, marketing and sales, software engineering, and R&D.
We have already seen examples of AI replacing job roles such as copywriters, coding, exam marking, database management in banking, web development, and customer service. There is strong evidence to suggest that AI could take over the work of paralegals and legal assistants, teachers, engineers, doctors, graphic designers, HR’s and many more.
ChatGPT themselves estimated that 80% of the U.S. workforce would have at least 10% of their jobs affected by large language models (LLMs).
