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Accountants, survey researchers, and interpreters could see a sizable chunk of their day-to-day work get outsourced to ChatGPT, according to a study published by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.
If you’re not keen on competing for employment with a machine, you might want to consider physical labor. The study found ChatGPT was about as useful as a bachelor’s in metaverse real estate management for tire repairers, meatpackers, and athletes.
Ultimately, the study found the most GPT-able jobs to be those performed by knowledge workers, particularly ones who spend their days coding and writing. The technology offers a smaller productivity boost for workers in careers with a heavy emphasis on science and critical thinking.
The paper stopped short of making any predictions about how quickly typing prompts into AI tools could become part of the workflow of various jobs. But it’s already happening at some workplaces: One digital artist went viral recently by describing how in a matter of weeks their job went from creating original art to entering prompts into the text-to-image AI app Midjourney and editing its output.
Looking ahead…almost 1 in 5 US employees could have at least half of their work tasks disrupted by ChatGPT, per the study. And Goldman Sachs estimates that AI chatbots might affect 300 million full-time workers across the major economies.—SK
