What Jobs are AI Replacing?
In November of last year, the world of technology was rocked by the emergence of ChatGPT, an AI chatbox that can hold human-like conversations and help you with a variety of tasks. Since then, the software has only continued to grow and develop. In March of this year, OpenAI, the same developer of ChatGPT, officially launched GPT-4. It has image recognition capabilities, advanced reasoning skills, and eight times the text processing capabilities of ChatGPT. It can also write codes in all popular programming languages. Its most notable feature is its stronger understanding of instructions compared with previous models.
These new product launches from OpenAI have plunged the tech industry into one of the most unpredictable moments in decades. Many industry experts believe that the development of artificial intelligence represents a fundamental technological disruption. It’s quite as disruptive as the invention of the web browser in the early 90s!
In a recent experiment, the questions on a variety of standardized tests were inputted on GPT-4 to see how it would fare against human candidates. The results were staggering. It outperformed human test-takers by 90% in a simulated Bar Exam, 93% in the SAT Reading Test, and 89% in the SAT Math Test.
This same experiment also illustrated how advanced this technology has become. When compared to the GPT-3.5, the previous software only scored 10% higher in the Bar Exam than human test-takers. During a live demonstration, GPT-4 generated answers to complex tax queries that could not be verified.
With this complex and continuously developing technology, the possibility of having computers replace humans is turning into reality and no longer science fiction. After conducting research and consulting with experts, Business Insider has compiled a list of jobs that are most at risk of being replaced by artificial intelligence.
Technical Jobs (programmers, software engineers, data analysts)
Coding is a very in-demand skill, but ChatGPT and similar AI tools have the potential to fill some of the gaps in the near future.
In fact, advanced technologies like this can write code faster than humans which means work can be done with fewer employees. Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who is studying the impact of artificial intelligence on human intelligence, stated that a company usually needs an entire building and development team to function. After the advent of AI, it may only need a few people. Companies like OpenAI, which created ChatGPT, are already considering replacing software engineers with AI.
However, Columbia Business School professor Oded Netzer believes that AI will help programmers rather than replace them. "As far as jobs go, I think it's mostly an enhancement, not a complete replacement," Netzer told CBS MoneyWatch. "Coding and programming is a great example of how AI can actually write code really well."
Media Jobs (advertising, content creation, technical writing, journalism)
All media jobs — including advertising, technical writing, journalism, and any role involving content creation — could be impacted by ChatGPT and similar forms of AI, says McKinsey partner, Anu Madgavkar. That's because AI is so good at reading, writing, and understanding text-based data.
Economist Paul Krugman suggested in a New York Times op-ed that ChatGPT may be able to perform tasks such as reporting and writing "more efficiently than humans."
The media industry is already experimenting with AI-generated content. Tech news site CNET wrote dozens of articles using an artificial intelligence tool similar to ChatGPT– though they did have to make some corrections after publication. Recently, BuzzFeed announced that it would use ChatGPT technology to generate new forms of content.
However, there are still those like Magdavkar who insist that the work content creators do cannot be automated. "Each of these occupations requires a lot of human judgment," she said.
Legal Industry Jobs (Paralegals, Legal Assistants)
Like media roles, legal industry jobs such as paralegals and legal assistants are responsible for digesting vast amounts of information, synthesizing what they have learned, and writing it into an understandable message. Language-oriented roles like this are vulnerable to automation, Madgavkar said. "The data is actually very structured, very language-oriented, so it's perfect for artificial intelligence," she added.
But again, AI will not be able to fully automate these jobs because it requires a level of human judgment to understand the needs of individual customers or employers.
Market Research Analysts
Market research analysts collect data, identify trends in the data, and then use what they find to design effective marketing campaigns or decide where to place ads.
These are things we're seeing now that artificial intelligence can handle. AI is good at processing data and predicting outcomes, which is why this field can be easily affected by the surge of AI technology.
Teachers
Faculty across the country are concerned about students using ChatGPT to cheat.
But, according to Pengcheng Shi, Associate Dean of the Department of Computing and Information Science at the Rochester Institute of Technology, they should also consider their job security as a point of concern.
According to Shi in an interview with the New York Post, ChatGPT "can already teach lessons. Although it has errors and inaccuracies in knowledge, it's easy to improve. Basically, you just train ChatGPT."
Financial Jobs (financial analyst, personal financial advisor)
Muro, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, said that as with market research analysts, financial analysts, personal financial advisors, and other personal finance jobs that crunch large amounts of digital data, these jobs will be affected as well.
“AI can identify market trends, highlight which investments in a portfolio are doing better and which are doing worse, and then use other various forms of data to predict better portfolios with, say, a financial firm,” Muro said. These analysts make a lot of money, but part of their work can be automated.
Traders
Rochester Institute of Technology's Shi also told the New York Post that certain Wall Street players may also be at risk.
“At an investment bank, people are hired right out of college to spend two or three years working like robots and doing Excel modeling — you can have AI do that,” he said.
Graphic Designers
In a December Harvard Business Review article, three professors pointed to DALL-E, an artificial intelligence tool that can generate images in seconds, as a potential disruptor of the graphic design industry.
"Improving the ability of millions of people to create and process images will have profound economic consequences," they wrote. Furthermore, "these recent advances in artificial intelligence are sure to spell a difficult and economically difficult time for some."
Accountant
Accounting is often seen as a stable career, but even employees in this industry can be at risk.
"Intellectual labor" in particular is at risk, said Brett Caraway, an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto's Institute for Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology. This includes lawyers or accountants. "It's something new, look at how disruptive and painful it is for jobs and politics" he stated.
Customer Service Agents
We've all experienced calling or chatting with customer service and having a robot answer. ChatGPT and related technologies could continue this trend.
A 2022 study by tech research firm Gartner predicts that by 2027, chatbots will be the primary customer service channel for approximately 25% of companies. Some companies are already replacing employees with ChatGPT.
A survey conducted by ResumeBuilder.com among 1,000 business leaders revealed that nearly half of them have implemented the use of chatbots. About half even said that ChatGPT could replace their company's employees. These companies who already use ChatGPT do so for a variety of reasons. The data showed that 66% use it for writing code, 58% for copywriting and content creation, 57% for customer support, 52% for meeting summaries and other documents, 77% for writing job descriptions, 66% to draft interview applications, and 65% to respond to applications.
"Overall, the majority of business leaders are satisfied with ChatGPT's work," ResumeBuilder.com wrote in a release.
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