Workers are already being replaced by artificial intelligence

Until recently, Dean Meadowcroft was a copywriter in a small marketing department.

His duties include writing company press releases, social media posts, and other content.

But late last year, his company introduced an artificial intelligence (AI) system.

“The idea at the time was to work with a human lead copywriter to speed up the process and basically streamline things a bit more,” he says.

Meadowcroft wasn’t particularly impressed with the AI’s performance.

“It made everyone sound like they were in the middle of the road, on the fence, so nobody stood out.”

Also, the contents had to be checked by human staff to see if they had been taken from elsewhere.

But the AI ​​was fast. What a human copywriter would take him 60-90 minutes to write, an AI can write him in less than 10 minutes.

About four months after introducing AI, Meadowcroft’s top four teams were laid off.

Meadowcroft isn’t sure, but he says AI has replaced them.

“The idea of ​​AI replacing writers or affecting my work was laughed off until it happened,” he said.

The latest wave of AI hit late last year when OpenAI launched ChatGPT.

Powered by Microsoft, ChatGPT provides human-like responses to questions and can generate essays, speeches, and even recipes in minutes.

While not perfect, systems like this are trained on the ocean of data available on the internet, the amount of which even a human team would be unable to digest.

So many people are wondering which jobs are at risk.

Job losses are not spread evenly across the economy. According to the report, 46% of the administrative department’s operations and 44% of the legal profession’s operations can be automated, but only 6% in the construction sector and only 4% in the maintenance sector.

The report also notes that the introduction of AI could boost productivity and growth and create new jobs.

We already have some evidence of that.

The furniture giant says 47% of customer calls are now handled by an AI called Billie.

IKEA has not seen any job losses from the use of AI, but such developments make many people uneasy.

A recent survey of 12,000 workers around the world conducted by the Boston Consulting Group (BGC) found that one-third are concerned that AI will replace them in the workplace, with more jobsite workers than managers. I could see that the staff were concerned.

BGC’s Jessica Apotheker says part of that is due to fear of the unknown.

“When we look at leaders and managers, more than 80% of them use AI at least weekly. The problem is the low ”

But maybe there are good reasons to be anxious.

Alejandro Graue spent the last three months doing voiceover work for his popular YouTube channel.

This seemed like a promising job, but I had to re-voice an entire English YouTube channel in Spanish.

Graue went on vacation late last year, confident that he would have work when he returned.

“I thought I had money to live on. I have two daughters, so I need money,” he said.

But to his surprise, a new Spanish-language video was uploaded to his YouTube channel before he returned to work. That video was something he wasn’t working on.

“When I clicked, it wasn’t my voice, it was an AI-generated voice. It was a very out-of-sync narration. It was terrible. So I thought, what is this? This is me.” It’s like becoming a new partner for ?” Channel-like crime? Or will this replace me? ’” he says.

A phone call to the studio where he worked confirmed the worst. The client wanted to experiment with AI as it is cheaper and faster.

The experiment turned out to be a failure. Viewers complained about the quality of the narration, and the channel eventually removed the video featuring AI-generated audio.

But Mr. Graue wasn’t so relieved. He sees technology as only advancing, and wonders what that will do for voice-over artists like him.

“What am I going to do if this starts happening with all my jobs? Should I buy a farm? I don’t know. Can I look for other jobs that won’t be replaced in the future as well?” is,” he says.

If AI isn’t coming to your job, perhaps you need to start using it in some way.

After months of freelance work, former copywriter Dean Meadowcroft has taken a new turn.

He currently works for an employee assistance provider that provides health and mental health advice to staff. Working with AI is now part of his job.

“I think the future of AI is about making human-driven content readily accessible, rather than removing the human side entirely,” he says.