Humans are Suboptimal and Optional

ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, is one of a growing list of technologies in the “generative AI” (GAI) category capable of understanding and generating human-like text. Its astounding capabilities can be used in many applications, including customer service, content creation, and natural language processing. However, one of the biggest concerns with GAI is its potential to automate jobs across a broad range of industries, leading to job loss and economic disruption. This is a phenomenon known as technological unemployment.

Few industries and job functions are immune to the impact of generative AI. As we have all experienced, customer service is an industry that is particularly at risk. GAI can automate tasks such as answering frequently asked questions and resolving simple issues. This can lead to cost savings for companies but also means that jobs previously done by humans will no longer be needed. This is already leading to job losses in the customer service industry.

Content creation is also at risk. GAI can generate high-quality written content, such as articles, blog posts, and product descriptions. This can save businesses time and money, but it also means that jobs previously done by human writers, editors, and content creators may no longer be needed.

Traditional STEM disciplines are not immune, as they have often been presumed to be. GAI can be used for text summarization, sentiment analysis, and classification. This can improve the efficiency and accuracy of these processes and open up new possibilities for automation. This could lead to job losses for those in NLP-related fields, such as data scientists, analysts, and researchers.

In addition to these industries, GAI could already impact jobs in other fields, such as language translation and teaching. Automating these tasks could lead to job loss in language interpretation and education.

Job loss is not just limited to the industries that GAI is currently being used in; as the technology continues to evolve and improve, it will be able to automate more tasks and jobs, leading to job loss across a broad range of industries. GPT-4, the next version of ChatGPT, will be orders of magnitude more powerful.

The job loss caused by GAI and other AI models is not new. Technology has been replacing human jobs for centuries. However, this is an entirely different phenomenon because the speed and breadth of job loss caused by GAI are significantly greater than any previous technological change. Businesses, educational institutions, and governments are already reeling – and this is just the beginning. No amount of re-skilling and job retraining will be able to meet the speed and breadth of the tectonic changes just starting to wash over them.

The full scope of effect on our society, government, and industry isn’t known yet – but I predict it will be more profound than anything we’ve seen. How will we respond to it?

I’ll be writing much more about this in the months to come.

Get in touch with Stephen.