In November 2022, OpenAI astounded users of its new artificial intelligence (AI) ChatGPT with its human-like and thorough responses. This able chatbot was capable of understanding many different questions, providing suggestions, researching material, writing essays and briefs, and even telling jokes (amongst other tasks).
These are talents that are often employed by human workers in the world today, making us question the significance of artificial intelligence in the labor market in the oncoming future. To comprehend this such circumstance, OpenAI published an examination in March 2023 wherein it studied the effect of large language models (LLM) and other sorts of generative AI on US industries and professions.
Through their report, OpenAI presented a definition of “exposure” to AI, meaning the possibilities of either augmenting or replacing the jobs of humans through AI. Results showed that approximately 80% of the US workforce belonged to a profession where to some extent, AI could be used to speed up those endeavors. Even more striking, around one-fifth of the US workforce was likely to have at least half of their job functions replaced by AI.
These jobs are mostly the repetitive tasks, data analysis work, and decision-making roles that can be done faster or better by AI. The professions that require critical thinking and science knowledge, however, did not show much AI exposure.
OpenAI also discovered correlations between AI exposure in the labor market, job education level, wages, and job training. Generally speaking, the highly-paid jobs, those that require a higher level education, and jobs with lesser job training could all find themselves in the cross-hairs of AI automation.
In contrast to this, hands-on jobs in the agriculture and manufacturing industries – and those dependant on face-to-face services – are less likely to be fully automated by AI. Nonetheless, information processing roles in those areas may be affected.
Finally, the OpenAI report highlighted the varying impact of artificial intelligence on individual job titles, considering the nature of the job, the automation level, and the exact tasks needed for the role. All in all, certain jobs may not be able to be automated because of their intangible requirements, such as creativity, cultural understanding, and good judgement.
OpenAI has looked into AI’s potential impact on the workforce, and it is plain to see that the influence of ChatGPT and large language model AI on different jobs is far from trivial. It is important to note, however, that this growing AI arms race is likely to not only offset employment in the future, but also to take task optimization to a whole new level.
About OpenAI and ChatGPT:
OpenAI is a nonprofit research laboratory established in 2015 with a mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity. OpenAI builds new technologies to develop advanced artificial intelligence systems, which are accessible to anyone. The company’s best-known project is ChatGPT, a natural language processing chatbot which builds a deep understanding of the contents of conversations.
