Novel writing, architecture and political analyses: just a handful of the tasks that ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, has performed since the Open AI research laboratory launched it in November 2022. Unlike humans, however, ChatGPT produced these in a matter of moments. With favourable productivity rates, AI is redefining the workplace – sparking a boom in new technology uptake to replace human work. You might be wondering, therefore, how exactly AI will impact the job landscape? And, more specifically, will it impact your job? Let’s find out.
The big question: Will AI replace jobs?
Ann Bordetsky, Partner at New Enterprise Associates, likens AI’s insurgence to the Industrial Revolution. Just as the factory line brought about greater efficiency to companies, so too does AI.
“AI won’t just boost efficiency for coding, marketing, legal or healthcare admin work — but entirely evolve how businesses and organisations of all types are built and run,” she tells Forbes Magazine.
AI could help employers achieve significant labour cost-savings – also bypassing major expenses associated with staffing a large workforce, such as office space, training programmes and wellness bundles.
If widely implemented, AI will impact up to two-thirds of current full-time jobs (300 million) globally, according to a recent Goldman Sachs study. The research included the analysis of traditional AI (think: data analysis, fraud detection and pattern detection) and generative AI, which produces new content (e.g., designs and synthetic data). Generative AI alone could entirely substitute a quarter of the global workforce.
Which jobs will be replaced by AI?
AI will affect some jobs more than others. White-collar workers – i.e., people who hold office positions – are most at risk, including:
●Administrative roles e.g., personal assistants, customer service providers. By 2027, expect a chatbot to receive one in four of your customer service enquiries. Increasing software sophistication is speeding up the uptake of automation technology for these role types. In the US, automation threatens to make 46% of administrative roles redundant.
●Judicial jobs e.g., paralegals, legal assistants. Data used in legal cases, in which swathes of content are synthesised, are typically very structured. This makes judicial jobs, alongside administrative positions, some of the most exposed to automation.
●Jobs in tech e.g., coders, data analysts and software engineers. Faster and more accurate: organisations may increasingly rely on AI to execute the number-crunching required in many tech-related jobs today.
●Media roles e.g., content creators, technical writers and journalists. New tools in generative AI continue to bolster the capability of software to read, write and understand text-based content – minimising the need for human contribution in this sector. Some media outlets, such as Buzzfeed and CNET, have already used platforms similar to ChatGPT to write numerous articles, quizzes and more.
●Finance positions e.g., financial advisors and analysts, accountants, market traders. Identifying patterns, such as market trends, is what traditional AI does best. Utilising platforms that do this at lightning speed is invaluable for companies wishing to stay one step ahead of their competitors.
How will jobs change in the future?
While AI has the potential to perform a multitude of jobs well, there’s nothing quite like the human touch.
Compassion, for example, is rated higher than or equal to the deliverance of sound medical knowledge in US healthcare – by both doctors and patients. 85% of patients prioritise compassion over pricing even, according to a HealthTap study.
And, like humans, AI isn’t perfect. Software such as ChatGPT still fumbles – with typos, coding errors and basic maths miscalculations a common occurrence. That’s why Manav Raj, co-author of the Goldman Sachs study and Assistant Professor of Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, insists AI must be complementary to jobs.
"We have to think about these things as productivity enhancing tools, as opposed to complete replacements."
Integrating AI into the workplace, therefore, could actually help elevate existing job performance. Coders, for example, could use this technology to increase efficiency and identify potential errors.
As with all emerging industries, the widespread uptake of AI would also lead to the creation of new job types. Already, demand for prompt engineers, who write text instead of code for AI systems, has rocketed.
It’s time to face up to AI
So while the lines of code for how AI will affect workplace roles are still being written, complete automation of work is unlikely. Instead, AI has the potential to enhance many job functions rather than replace them.
Rather than feeling threatened by its emergence in your industry, our recommended approach is to get to know AI and its application to your role. This way, you can be ahead of the curve when it comes to including it in your workplace processes, which will secure your position for the long term.
—
Are you looking for your role of the future? View our full range of vacancies on our website here: https://www.orionjobs.com/jobs.
