“Our findings indicate that approximately 80% of the U.S. workforce could have at least 10% of their work tasks affected by the introduction of GPTs, while around 19% of workers may see at least 50% of their tasks impacted. The influence spans all wage levels, with higher-income jobs potentially facing greater exposure.”
https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.10130
This is just one of many studies rushing to assess turn potential impact of generative AI on jobs. I have little faith that these early efforts are anywhere near right or that their methodology is sensible at all. I’ll bet a lot of this is just academics rushing to build a reputation in a hot new area. But they could be wrong in *either* direction.
Best case, AI makes people more productive in their work. Worst case, AI replaces people. In most cases, I think a combination: people become more productive, so you need fewer people, even if AI isn’t doing the job all on its own.
A lot of higher education, higher pay jobs seem quite ripe for AI productivity boost and hence headcount reductions. Thinking back to my lawyer days, AI could have significantly sped up legal research, document review, drafting briefs. As a junior equity analyst, a lot of what I did is stuff that AI can do or will soon be able to do. For what I do today, AI can eventually be a big timesaver. The quant and algorithmic trading shops are quick to adopt any new tool, and have been using other forms of AI for some time.
To be clear, I think there may be not that many jobs that can be done *entirely* by AI, whether generative or other. But I think there will be more and more, and ultimately quite a lot, of jobs where AI can do part of the job with humans using the AI output, selecting from choices prepared by the AI, or supervising the AI. Fewer humans. And eventually, humans who never learned to do the work now entrusted to the AI, so that more and more of the knowledge and skills required to run the business or operate the equipment exists only in the AI.
Where do you get experienced CPAs from, if 50% or 80% of the junior and trainee CPAs no longer exist? Ditto radiologists, pilots, insurance agents, lawyers, programmers, librarians, etc.
I’m not liking where this is going.