Since its November 2022 launch, ChatGPT has rapidly changed the future of work, and affected labor market outcomes in exceptional ways. AI, automation, and hybrid work are marked concepts that seem to be at the top of everyone’s mind.
Already, artificial intelligence chatbots can perform diverse tasks ranging from writing emails to building apps and even taking medical licensing exams.
Subsequently, OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has released GPT-4, an upgraded version of the ChatGPT technology with marked improvements. This includes building a website from a hand-drawn sketch, analyzing images, and generating extensive text.
That said, you can’t afford to ignore the impact of AI and automation across the board.
You need to understand how ChatGPT works. You also have to seek insights on other artificial intelligence and automation trends that influence your business, or job.
Here we talk about ChatGPT’s pros and cons, which jobs these tools will potentially displace or replace, and use cases of the ChatGPT environment to paint a picture of the future of work.
What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT or Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer is a novel natural language AI chatbot. At its basics, it means you can ask it any question and it will offer an answer. But unlike Siri or other voice assistant apps, ChatGPT is built on the Large Language Model (LLM). This means it can scan huge quantities of information from the internet for deep learning.
Currently, ChatGPT’s established capabilities include ideation, writing assistance, background research, data analysis, coding, and math.
However, experts at the Brooklyn Institute say that ChatGPT and its rival AI models are dramatically disrupting the labor market. But they are most advantageous in ways such as:
- Replacing routine micro-tasks in many sectors
- Enhancing productivity
- Supercharging workers’ competencies as against the general fear that ChatGPT may replace human workers.
The Potential Future of ChatGPT
No doubt, we don’t yet fully understand the full capabilities of AI models like ChatGPT. But what makes them different from previous generations of AI is their deep learning capabilities. At its core, It allows them to generate text quickly and efficiently. So they can answer questions, and perform other language and speech-related tasks that mimic humans better than before.
This is why ChatGPT and other LLMs have become useful assistants, especially in summarizing information and creating rough drafts of texts, which makes them pretty valuable to diverse sectors. For instance, its ability to summarize and generate texts means it can save a lot of time regarding research or writing.
ChatGPT also has access to vast amounts of information. So, it can find the appropriate information for each task quickly. It may also generate ideas and suggestions based on input and bring about insights that you did not think of. This is why it can make your work more efficient, leading to significant productivity gains.
AI Language Model Applications in Job Markets
Overall, ChatGPT will disrupt all sectors, but some sectors will be much more significantly affected than others.
In the education sector, religion, sociology, political science, philosophy, law, post-secondary teachers of language and literature, psychology, and history will witness a lot of changes. But these changes won’t be about taking away jobs. Instead, it may assist teachers with developing better teaching materials, catching cheating and plagiarism, among other things.
Like the teaching sector, sectors like securities, commodities, investments, and legal services will also witness disruptions with the development of ChatGPT-based AI tools that can take over routine and mundane tasks. Already, Morgan Stanley, one of the world’s biggest investment management firms, is creating its own AI system based on ChatGPT.
In contrast, in routine jobs like phone operators, language disruptions may be significantly displaced by AI. In the short term, AI also has the potential to decrease the need for these job roles alongside news copy editors, journalistic writing, and more. However, it would also supercharge these roles in amazing ways.
We must also realize that AI has the potential to create jobs. Already, ChatGPT has developed a new role that may contribute significantly to fields ranging from machine learning and big data to digital marketing and information security.
According to Rubenstein Fellow Anton Korinek, an expert on language models, at an event at the Brookings Institute, Prompt Engineering, a new AI-generated field and job role, will become a much sought-after skill. Prompt Engineering is a mix of programming and natural language to improve the capabilities and outcomes of using these AI systems, leading to the possibility of human-machine hybrid work.
Overall, taking advantage of these systems demands that we change our workflows to accommodate and adapt to them.
Some Use Cases of ChatGPT
Across the internet, there are already many use cases for the applications of ChatGPT. People have used ChatGPT to generate ideas, produce code that generates novel art, write lectures, and do basic consulting reports. Let’s explore more ways this technology can be useful.
- Customer service: ChatGPT can provide fast and accurate answers to customer inquiries, thereby reducing the workload on human customer service teams and improving customer satisfaction.
- Content creation: ChatGPT can be beneficial for writing rough drafts for storytelling, blog posts, and scaling your content creation.
- SEO may also be beneficial in finding keywords and optimizing your content. However, SEO solutions are much better at providing comprehensive SEO solutions.
- Marketing: ChatGPT can help generate ideas for creating buyer personas, building sales challenges, and evaluating customer feedback precisely and quickly. It may also be beneficial to identify and analyze competitors, create campaigns, and much more.
- Businesses: It may also help with generating business ideas, ideas for brand awareness, and solving reputation issues.
ChatGPT’s Current Limitations and How It Influences The Job Market
At the moment, ChatGPT is still in its early stages. Hence, the reliability of data can also depend on the knowledge depth of the user and is only as good as the input the user gives.
Furthermore, in the same way that ChatGPT is brilliant in many things, it has also shown itself to be flawed and prone to even making up results entirely. One startling flaw is ChatGPT’s eerie way of making up data, which can be dangerous. Recently, the Guardian released an article on how ChatGPT has been making fake Guardian articles dating back several years.
ChatGPT, while capable of understanding some aspects of human behavior and language, may fail to detect emotional nuances as well as humans can. It can also not offer the unique creativity and perspective that humans bring to the table.
This mostly means that high-skilled roles are unlikely to witness as much disruption as middle-skill jobs. However, it may provide middle-skill workers with the ability to bridge knowledge gaps and produce results like highly skilled workers.
Also, physical jobs like brick masons, carpenters, textile workers, and more won’t be affected, but these industries may be impacted by other AI systems and automation in the coming years.
Preparing for a Future with ChatGPT
Considering the limitations of ChatGPT, we can say that humans are still more important than ever. ChatGPT is changing how we work, and ironically, upgrading our skills and understanding and adapting these tools are the best bets for taking full advantage of these systems.
That said, there’s a lot of learning to do around the table. For instance, businesses must figure out the best ways to apply these AI systems to achieve the most benefits while remaining ethically compliant with any regulations that may emerge and protecting the confidentiality of their intellectual property.
Workers will also figure out how to adapt to these tools for optimum efficiency and productivity. Business owners and leaders will also play a role here by providing updated and life-long training avenues for their workers.
There’s also one aspect we often overlook: how humans prefer dealing with humans in diverse situations. So, even if we know that the technology is disruptive, an AI-fueled takeover is nowhere near.
Final thoughts
No one can fully predict the future of work, especially given the cocktail of concepts like hybrid work, diversity, equity, remote work, AI, automation, and more.
Plus, many other economic factors may also influence and shape the future of work, such as the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, demand for green businesses, fears of financial market collapses, shrinking workforces, aging demographics, and more.
All these might seem like different, isolated issues, but they are more connected than we can ever realize. Together, they will influence what work looks like in the coming years.
Overall, the Forrester series of research offers one solution: it is impossible to avoid, ignore, overlook, or underestimate the changes we might see soon. Instead, we must begin measuring and adapting to these new concepts to stay ahead.
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