February 07, 2023
ChatGPT, a popular chatbot from OpenAI, has been used to do multiple tasks since its release in November last year. These include writing, helping students cheat and creating children's books.
The powerful chatbot with the fastest-growing user base is expected to replace multiple jobs.
According to Business Insider, Google, if the chatbot is interviewed at the company, could hire it at a beginner level for coding. Moreover, Amazon employees who tested ChatGPT spoke very highly of the chatbot.
Even though ChatGPT is an extremely impressive bot, it can also generate misinformation, give incorrect answers to coding problems and produce errors in basic math.
As per a study conducted by the University of Oxford in 2013, 47% of jobs in the US could be replaced by AI in the next 20 years. However, this could be wrong.
Human judgement is still required in these technologies to prevent errors and bias, Anu Madgavkar, who is a partner at the McKinsey Global Institute, told Insider.
"We have to think about these things as productivity enhancing tools, as opposed to complete replacements," she said.
As per the research conducted by Insider, these are the jobs that are at risk of being replaced by AI.
Programming and coding are jobs that have a very high demand in today's world, however, there is a possibility that they might be replaced in the near future.
Tech jobs including software development, web development, computer programming, coding and data scientists are "pretty amenable" to AI technologies as ChatGPT can accurately crunch numbers, said Madgavkar.
It can also produce code faster as compared to humans, said Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute.
"What took a team of software developers might only take some of them," he added.
ChatGPT is good at writing content in a "more efficient" way than humans and could replace jobs like advertising, technical writing, journalism, and any role that involves content creation, said Madgavkar. However, content creation is not automatable to a big extent, he added.
ChatGPT may be able to do reporting and writing "more efficiently than humans", said an economist.
Even though paralegals' and legal assistants' jobs can be replicated, they cannot be replaced entirely as they require a degree of human judgement.
An expert says that AI is good at analysing data and predicting outcomes, hence, it can be taken over by AI.
AI has sent a wave of worry across the teachers' community as it can easily take over the teaching job. ChatGPT "can easily teach classes already", said a university's associate dean.
"Although it has bugs and inaccuracies in terms of knowledge, this can be easily improved," Pengcheng Shi said. "Basically, you just need to train the ChatGPT."
Experts believe that AI has also put the finance industry at risk. These jobs include market research analysts, financial analysts, personal financial advisers, and those requiring manipulating of significant amounts of numerical data, said Muro, the researcher at The Brookings Institute.
He said that parts of their jobs are automatable.
Rochester Institute of Technology's Associate Dean Pengcheng Shi said that some of the Wall Street roles cold also be at risk.
"At an investment bank, people are hired out of college, and spend two, three years to work like robots and do Excel modeling — you can get AI to do that," he said.
DALL-E, which is an AI tool that can generate images within seconds, could jeopardise the graphic design industry, said Harvard Business Review post.
They said that teaching employees additional skills to create and manipulate images will affect the economy and at that time, AI will help in the hard time.
An associate professor said that "intellectual labour" could be threatened and this includes lawyers and accountants.
"It is something new, and it will be interesting to see just how disruptive and painful it is to employment and politics," he said.
ChatGPT and related technologies could also replace customer service providers. As per a study conducted in 2023, chatbots will take over 25% of companies by 2027 as the main customer service channel.