Will Generative AI Revolutionize the Labor Market? Understanding Job Displacement Risks

The world can’t stop talking about ChatGPT. Once people learn how to use ChatGPT, they love how the chatbot tool gives impressively realistic responses to various inputs. However, some are also concerned about the kind of information users might use the tool to get or create. Others worry they’ll eventually be out of work when ChatGPT replaces them.

What Is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is a chatbot that uses the GPT-3 (Generative Pretrained Transformer 3) framework, a highly advanced artificial intelligence (AI) model used for language processing developed by OpenAI. ChatGPT has more than 175 billion parameters, making it among the largest and most powerful language models available, and the model was trained using a massive amount of data from the internet and other sources.

How Do People Use ChatGPT?

ChatGPT launched in November 2022, and it didn’t take long for people to experiment with how they might use it. For example, you canuse ChatGPT to do everything from telling pumpkin jokes to advising how to improve team collaboration or even writing marketing emails!

Furthermore, you can use ChatGPT to write an essay in seconds, and there are many otherways students can use ChatGPT . Or, ChatGPT can offer mental health advice or write survey questions that examine how people feel about AI.

Alternatively, you could use ChatGPT to get ideas for starting a money-making venture. You might find the answers overly broad or formulaic and lacking essential specifics. However, you might get better results when asking ChatGPT for help starting particular types of businesses, such as laundromats.

Then, actor Ryan Reynolds used ChatGPT to write a commercial for Mint Mobile, a company he partially owns. Reynolds stipulated that ChatGPT write the advertisement in first-person voice, make it contain a curse word, use a joke, and let the audience know about an ongoing promotion. It did all those things, but Reynolds found the results “mildly terrifying.”

These examples might make you think there’sno limit to what ChatGPT can do . However, that’s not an accurate assumption.

Will ChatGPT Replace Programmers?

Whenever a new AI tool emerges on the tech scene, many people understandably wonder whether that innovation might get so advanced that it makes their jobs obsolete. Even people such as programmers, who have highly specialized skills, might face that worry.

However,ChatGPT’s limitations make it incapable of entirely taking over programmers’ work. The ChatGPT site contains a sample interaction of someone using the tool to debug code, though.

The responses contain some helpful details, although the answers repeatedly mention ChatGPT needs more information and context to provide better assistance. In the time it takes a programmer to write several more responses to clarify, they might get more helpful answers from a colleague on the programming team.

Plus, programming languages don’t suit how ChatGPT works best. For example,The Washington Post showed various ChatGPT responses when phrasing inputs as statements or questions. Those are the ideal approaches when using this tool. For example, you can’t tell ChatGPT to build a website and get a fully functional result in seconds.

People have still experimented with ChatGPT for programming reasons, though.Lablab.ai features an in-depth tutorial showing how to make a website with ChatGPT. Others with programming backgrounds have also used the tool to generate code snippets and explain coding concepts in plain language.

Their results suggest users will most likely get the best outcomes using ChatGPT for programming if they already have some knowledge of the subject. As more people test the tool’s capabilities, they’ll likely see more examples of how ChatGPT could supplement someone’s programming knowledge.

Some malicious actors have tried to use ChatGPT to their advantage. For example, somecriminals are using ChatGPT to make malware , ransomware, and other malicious encryption tools, despite having limited programming knowledge. This ChatGPT application will likely increase the challenges cybersecurity teams face.

Will ChatGPT Replace Other Jobs?

You might wonder ifcontent writers should worry about ChatGPT taking their jobs. Fortunately, those professionals need not fear. ChatGPT responses are often repetitive and sometimes outdated, making them less valuable.

The most likely outcome is content creators, marketing professionals, or those in similar roles use ChatGPT as an idea-generation tool. The chatbot could help them overcome writer’s block but can’t replace the creativity and first-hand experience these professionals typically have.

There’s also an interesting Twitter thread where ChatGPT impressed by helping to diagnose a type of heart disease. However, others replied that the chatbot is good at faking expertise and provided several possible diagnoses. Someone with genuine medical expertise must review the responses and use their knowledge to gauge the chatbot’s accuracy.

Elsewhere, people are explicitlyformatting questions to make ChatGPT ignore its programming. That practice could spread misinformation. The question-and-answer site Stack Overflow also initiated a temporary ban on ChatGPT. Staff members explained the influx of ChatGPT-generated responses swamped content moderators who need some level of subject matter expertise to verify the accuracy, andspotting generative AI written text is next to impossible.

ChatGPT Deserves Caution

The examples above and elsewhere highlight how ChatGPT might gradually change how employees work, but it won’t take over entire jobs. Instead, more people will start using ChatGPT to guide applicable parts of their workflows. If you’re thinking about using the chatbot for business, school, or pleasure, do so carefully and never assume you got wholly accurate answers.

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