ChatGPT has already led to a decrease in employment and earnings for freelance writers, editors and proofreaders, but this type of advanced AI is expected to impact well over half of jobs in advanced economies, a report has said.
The global report, based on research from more than 30 nations, has estimated that in advanced economies, 60 percent of current jobs could be affected by the introduction of general-purpose AI. This is because cognitive task-oriented jobs are prevalent in these labour markets.
The findings, outlined in ‘The International Scientific Report on the Safety of Advanced AI’, were published ahead of the international AI Seoul Summit in South Korea.
Warnings about the growing use of AI in the workplace have come thick and fast over the past 18 months because the latest generation of the tech can perform very complex tasks, potentially replacing human workers.
General-purpose AI includes large language models (LLM) such as ChatGPT, BERT and Claude, to name a few, and the proliferation of this technology is accelerating.
“An extensive body of literature has studied the exposure of jobs to automation and AI generally, without a particular focus on general-purpose AI. In comparison to this research, the exploration of likely labour market impacts of general-purpose AI is at a very early stage,” the report said.
AI impacts are not just expected in advanced economies. The share of jobs thought to be potentially affected in emerging economies is lower, but still substantial, at 40 percent.
Researchers reiterated that this type of advanced AI has been shown to increase productivity, quality and speed in strategy consulting, as well as improve performance in customer support and computer programming.
“Machine translation and language models have also acted as substitutes for human workers in simple large-scale language translation and some writing and coding-related occupations, “leading to reduced demand for their services.”
However, the report added: “Some economists consider it likely that job losses will be offset by increased demand for labour in existing occupations and the creation of new kinds of jobs.”
This would be in line with previous waves of automation, the report said, highlighting that more than 60 percent of employment in 2018 was in jobs with titles that did not exist in 1940.
Wage impacts
The report’s researchers said that the impact of AI on employee wages is ambiguous.
The greater use of AI in the labour market “is likely to simultaneously increase wages in some sectors by augmenting productivity and creating new opportunities, and decrease wages in other sectors where automation reduces labour demand faster than new tasks are created”.
But there is optimism as many economists said that potential job losses as a result of automation could be offset, partly or completely, by the creation of new jobs and by increased demand in non-automated sectors.
However, researchers warned: “Labour market frictions, such as the time needed for workers to learn new skills or relocate for new jobs, could cause unemployment in the short run even if overall labour demand remained unchanged.”
Economists are divided on the magnitude and timing of the effect of AI on the labour market. Views range from widespread transformation in the next ten years to no imminent step-change in AI-related automation and productivity growth.
The AI Seoul Summit will build on work from the AI Safety Summit held at Bletchley Park in the UK in November 2023.
