Harry Fletcher
Feb 03, 2023
content.jwplatform.com
Could AI be putting more jobs at risk than we realise? Artificial intelligence is making headlines left, right and centre at the moment after ChatGPT became the internet’s latest obsession recently.
The bot even reportedly passed a Master of Business Administration test (MBA) at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business with "excellent" results.
Now, people are looking into the long-term implications of the technology, and experts are warning that jobs could be at risk from it in the not-too-distant future.
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What does the future hold with AI?iStock
Pengcheng Shi, who is an associate dean in the department of computing and information sciences at Rochester Institute of Technology, also spoke to the New York Post about the impact the tech could have.
“AI is replacing the white-collar workers. I don’t think anyone can stop that,” Shi said. “This is not crying wolf. The wolf is at the door.”
According to Shi, there are five career paths at risk.
The first is teaching at middle school or high school level, as ChatGPT “can easily teach classes already”.
“Although it has bugs and inaccuracies in terms of knowledge, this can be easily improved. Basically, you just need to train the ChatGPT,” Shi added.
The second is the world of finance. Shi explained: “I definitely think [it will impact] the trading side, but even [at] an investment bank, people [are] hired out of college and spend two, three years to work like robots and do Excel modeling — you can get AI to do that.”
Next is the world of software engineering.
“I worry for such people. Now I can just ask ChatGPT to generate a website for me — any type of person whose routine job would be doing this for me is no longer needed,” Shi said. “As time goes on, probably today or the next three, five, 10 years, those software engineers, if their job is to know how to code … I don’t think they will be broadly needed.”
Could teaching be one of the professions at risk in future?iStock
Journalism is another, with Shi adding: “Copy editing is certainly something it does an extremely good job at. Summarizing, making an article concise and things of that nature, it certainly does a really good job.”
Finally, Shi listed graphic design as something AI could have a huge effect in, saying: “Before, you would ask a photographer or you would ask a graphic designer to make an image [for websites]. That’s something very, very plausibly automated by using technology similar to ChatGPT.”
It’s not the only ominous messaging we’ve had about AI over recent weeks.
An expert recently warned MPs about the negative consequences of "superhuman" artificial intelligence.
The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee listened to Michael Cohen, a doctoral student at Oxford University who spoke of the " particular risk" AI poses and so should be regulated like nuclear weapons.
“With superhuman AI, there is a particular risk that is of a different sort of class, which is... it could kill everyone,” Cohen said, as per The Independent.
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