- AI could impact the jobs of millions of workers in the future.
- These technologies may improve the lives of some workers, but they are not guaranteed.
- Insiders asked a few experts about five potential impacts of the AI boom.
Even if your work hasn’t been impacted by AI yet, it could very well be in the next few years.
In March, researchers at Goldman Sachs said generative AI like ChatGPT could destroy (but not necessarily replace) 300 million full-time jobs worldwide. estimated. However, the exact nature of these impacts remains unclear and will likely vary by industry and role.
With the introduction of AI, some workers may become more productive, spend less time on tedious tasks, earn higher wages, continue to work remotely, and even be able to work four days a week. However, other workers will face increased competition, lower wages, and even these technologies will replace their jobs.
Insiders asked several experts in AI, economics, and remote work about how the future of AI could impact the working lives of Americans.
AI could make your job easier and less boring
Nearly two-thirds of U.S. workers could be more productive with AI, according to Goldman Sachs. Some Americans already use these tools at work.
“It is absolutely true that AI applications like ChatGPT can greatly improve the lives of workers,” Mark Muro, a senior researcher at the Brookings Institution, told Insider.
AI can help workers with time-consuming tasks like research, writing, and data analysis, giving them time to focus on other areas of their work.
“Some of the boring part of the job may go away,” said Carl-Benedict Frey, an economist at Oxford. “We might put more emphasis on generating the right ideas, asking the right questions, more interesting things.”
AI could kill some jobs and increase competition for remaining jobs
Generative AI technologies like ChatGPT will likely create some jobs and replace others. But some experts say the main impact of the AI boom is actually making many existing jobs more competitive.
AI technologies like ChatGPT make it easier for people to write and code, so today’s writers and programmers, for example, can work with ChatGPT-assisted individuals over a limited number of jobs. Frey told Insider that it could face more competition from .
Columbia Business School professor Oded Netzer agreed, saying, “You won’t be replaced by AI, but by someone who knows what to do with it.” said. “People who know what to do with AI will do their jobs more efficiently.”
AI improves worker productivity.It is up to the leader to decide who will share the profits
S&P 500 earnings could increase by more than 30% due to AI productivity gains, according to Goldman Sachs. Some of these profits may flow to workers in the form of higher wages, but there is no guarantee.
“Employee experience can be highly dependent on the nature of companies adopting these technologies,” Muro told Insider. “Is it being introduced in the spirit of improving processes and producing more and better results, or is it being used roughly just to fire workers? It’s the difference between ‘bad AI’.”
“Where the profits go depends on how the AI is used,” Frey added. As AI makes some industries more competitive, economists said the dynamic could also drive down wages for some workers.
AI could alleviate managers’ ‘productivity paranoia’ and allow some employees to work remotely
Over the past year, many companies have brought their employees back to the office at least a few days a week, partly because of remote worker productivity concerns.
According to a Microsoft survey of 20,000 workers and leaders in 11 countries last summer, 85% of business leaders said they don’t trust the productivity of remote workers.
Whether remote workers are actually less productive is debatable. But for companies with leadership with this concern, AI productivity gains could help forget some of the “productivity paranoia” of remote work. In theory, this factor could help some companies continue to work remotely.
For example, a May New York Fed research report found that remote call center workers “take 12 percent fewer calls per hour than field workers.” On the other hand, an NBER research report in April found that call center workers using generative AI tools improved their productivity by an average of 14%.
There is another way AI can be used to alleviate “productivity paranoia,” according to Oxford economist Carl Benedict Frey. Companies may deploy technology to monitor remote workers.
“While I believe AI can alleviate the paranoia of remote work in this way, this can happen in privacy-intrusive ways that are not in the best interests of workers,” he said. .
Nick Bloom, an economist and telecommuting expert at Stanford University, told Insider that another concern for remote workers is that some jobs could be replaced by AI. rice field.
“Think how good ChatGPT 6 will be in two years, maybe even better than your typical call center employee,” he said. “So I think the biggest impact of AI will be the shift to AI for a large amount of fully remote jobs like data entry, payroll, etc.”
Colombian Netzer agreed.
“Many of the jobs that are likely to be replaced, such as content marketing, call centers, and basic coding, are more flexible to work remotely,” he said.
AI could enable a four-day work week
A four-day work week in the US could make workers appreciate AI technologies like ChatGPT.
Columbia University’s Netzer previously told insiders that advances in AI could boost U.S. labor productivity growth, which he called a “necessary condition for reducing working hours.”
Frey added: “Productivity-enhancing technology, including ChatGPT, makes a shorter workweek more feasible.”
But Michael Chui, a partner at the McKinsey Global Institute, previously told an insider that AI’s productivity gains are no guarantee that Americans will work less. He said that in some organizations, employees may come to expect more production in the same number of days.
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