Big companies such as Microsoft and Google point to artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots as a co-pilot or assistant for users in general, but there are many experts who point out that this type of technology will change many professions, either by making their jobs simpler and faster, replacing employees or creating new professions.
Telemarketing, accountants, translators, teachers, programmers and even investors are some of the professions that studies have indicated will change as AI becomes more popular.
The capabilities of GPT-4, the latest version of OpenAI – creators of ChatGPT – can solve “new and difficult tasks” with “human-level performance” in fields such as mathematics, coding, medicine, law and psychology, according to a paper published in March by researchers at Microsoft – a company that has invested billions in OpenAI.
PROFESSIONS MOST AFFECTED BY LANGUAGE MODELLERS
New York University professor Robert Seamans was involved in a study on how language modellers such as ChatGPT, GPT-4, Bing and Bard will affect professions.
“Telemarketing was the occupation we found to be most exposed to changes in language modelling or advances in language modelling, followed by other professions such as teaching,” Seamans told Efe.
The top five professions on the list are: Telemarketers, university professors of English language and literature, university professors of foreign language, university professors of history and university professors of law.
Other non-education professions that were among the top 20 most affected were sociology, political science, mediators and judges and magistrates.
However, Seamans points out that this does not mean that these jobs will be replaced by AI, as what may happen is that AI will be “complementary to the work being done”.
Another study published last week, which also looked at the “labour market impact of language modelling”, indicates that managers are among the professionals whose careers are most exposed to the capabilities of generative artificial intelligence, as at least half of all accounting tasks could be completed much faster with the technology.
The same is true for mathematicians, interpreters, writers and nearly 20% of the US workforce, according to the study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and OpenAI.
FASTER COMPUTING
Seamans highlights that the generative AI tool he would like to investigate the effect it will have on various jobs is Microsoft-owned GitHub’s Copilot application.
“What GitHub’s Copilot does is help software developers by suggesting ideas to them as they write code, it suggests commands and code that the programmer might want to follow. It’s kind of like what Gmail does in email,” he explains.
According to Seamans, this allows computer scientists to do their work more quickly and may even help those who are studying computer science.
A fourth study by GitHub researchers evaluated the impact of generative AI on software developers.
In this test, developers who were given an entry-level task and encouraged to use Copilot completed their task 55% faster than those who did the task manually.
While AI alone is probably a long way off from managing investors’ money in the stock market, a study called: “Can ChatGPT improve the investment decision from a portfolio management perspective?”, points out that ChatGPT is already a better portfolio manager than an inexperienced person.
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN
On the flip side, there were nearly 800,000 AI-related job openings in the US in 2022, according to data compiled by Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Centric Institute.
California was the state with the most AI-related hires – more than 142,000 in 2022 – and, on average, 1.5% of job openings in any of the 50 states were AI-related.
Asked what career he would recommend to a teenager, Seamans said he would first recommend finding a career based on their tastes and passions.
“Putting all that aside, I would tell him to think about the skills that we humans have and think about investing in that. Things like judgment and critical thinking. Those are skills that go into many different types of professions,” he concludes.
