Are you afraid that all of those new AI programs like ChatGPT will someday soon steal your job? Well, think again. A new study from the International Labor Organization (ILO) has found that Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) is more likely to augment than destroy jobs by automating some tasks rather than taking over a role entirely. But don’t celebrate just yet as some fields, clerical work, for example, are definitely in trouble.
The study, Generative AI and Jobs: A global analysis of potential effects on job quantity and quality, found that most jobs and industries are only partly exposed to automation and the expansion of AI.
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But this does not mean that all jobs are safe. In the entertainment and news industries companies look to use Ai to produce new content.
This is why the Writers Guild of America went on strike against the Hollywood studios. One of the main issues behind the strike is the possibility that studios will do away with most writers’ jobs and use AI programs like ChatGPT instead to write screenplays.
And the study’s authors found that clerical workers need to be the most concerned with being put out of work since their field has the” greatest technological exposure, with nearly a quarter of tasks considered highly exposed and more than half of tasks having medium-level exposure.”
And this leaves women more likely to lose their jobs as they make up an overwhelming majority in the threatened field like clerical work.
But, they also declared, “Most jobs and industries are only partially exposed to automation and are thus more likely to be complemented rather than substituted by AI.”
In other occupational groups, they explained, including managers, professionals and technicians, only a small share of the various jobs were found to be at risk of being done away with and about 25% of all jobs were rated as having “medium exposure levels.”
“While it is impossible to predict how generative AI will further develop, the current capabilities and future potential of this technology are central to discussions of its impact on jobs,” said the researchers.
“The launch of ChatGPT marked an important advance in the public’s exposure to AI tools,” they said. “In this new wave of technological transformation, machine learning models have started to leave the labs and begin interacting with the public, demonstrating their strengths and weaknesses in daily use. The chat function dramatically shortened the distance between AI and the end user, simultaneously providing a platform for a wide range of custom-made applications and innovations. Given these significant advancements, it is not surprising that concerns over potential job loss have resurged.”
In the end, the study’s authors placed the onus on people for determining to what extent AI will cost other people their jobs. “It is humans that are behind the decision to incorporate such technologies and it is humans that need to guide the transition process,” they wrote.
ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) is a chatbot that was launched by OpenAI in November 2022. Chatbot.com explains that a chatbot is software that simulates human-like conversations with users via chat. Its key task is to answer user questions with instant messages.
It is just one of many such programs available, with major firms like Google and Facebook engaged in a race to develop the most advanced AI programs. But we are still very far away from the possibility of machines taking over the world as they do in dystopian sci-fi movies like “The Terminator” and “The Matrix.”
