[Article] How ChatGPT Will Destabilize White-Collar Work

[hatshepsut93]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/chatgpt-ai-economy-automation-jobs/672767/

In the next five years, it is likely that AI will begin to reduce employment for college-educated workers. As the technology continues to advance, it will be able to perform tasks that were previously thought to require a high level of education and skill. This could lead to a displacement of workers in certain industries, as companies look to cut costs by automating processes. While it is difficult to predict the exact extent of this trend, it is clear that AI will have a significant impact on the job market for college-educated workers. It will be important for individuals to stay up to date on the latest developments in AI and to consider how their skills and expertise can be leveraged in a world where machines are increasingly able to perform many tasks.

I'm personally skeptical on the ability of machine learning/neural networks to fully replace humans. I think it's more likely that it will boost productivity by performing the more simple and routine tasks, but there will still be the need for human touch. People will lose jobs because now a professional will be able to do the work of 2 professionals, but AI won't do the work of all professionals.

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[Casdinyard]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/chatgpt-ai-economy-automation-jobs/672767/

In the next five years, it is likely that AI will begin to reduce employment for college-educated workers. As the technology continues to advance, it will be able to perform tasks that were previously thought to require a high level of education and skill. This could lead to a displacement of workers in certain industries, as companies look to cut costs by automating processes. While it is difficult to predict the exact extent of this trend, it is clear that AI will have a significant impact on the job market for college-educated workers. It will be important for individuals to stay up to date on the latest developments in AI and to consider how their skills and expertise can be leveraged in a world where machines are increasingly able to perform many tasks.

I'm personally skeptical on the ability of machine learning/neural networks to fully replace humans. I think it's more likely that it will boost productivity by performing the more simple and routine tasks, but there will still be the need for human touch. People will lose jobs because now a professional will be able to do the work of 2 professionals, but AI won't do the work of all professionals.

ChatGPT is a powerful assistant tool, but through my usage of it over time (I'm a copywriter, and I use a ChatGPT to help supplant me with ideas and new words to use and abuse throughout my works), I would lie if I say it wasn't useful, but it's not on par with how we work. ChatGPT, despite the fact that it is marketed as a conversational and human-like chat tool, still lacks a couple areas in authenticity which makes it stand out when checking comes around. So I don't think the tool will effectively destabilize or even replace white collar work, what I predict will happen is that the tool will be an aid to many people especially within the aforementioned white-collar-sector where it would be indispensable.

[Spaceman1000$]

Going by your assertion, I will agree with you at some point but not entirely.
There are some levels to which automated machines can work, but you still need humans to man those machines and make other supervisory roles.

As technology advances, human beings strategies on role to play in companies and government agencies, that's why the labour force has all the knowledge any industry is looking for. So I believe, the white-collar workers will still be available to offer their technical know-how when ever the needs arises.

[mindrust]

This is the biggest step to destroy the middle class. I mean the middle class weren’t alive much anyway but thanks to AI, job-wise whatever was left available for them will be gone soon.

Fear not however.

The Universal Basic Income will come to the rescue.

By 2030, everybody will be driving golf carts, eat insects, have their citizen scores and universal basic income. You won’t have to go to work. You will be at home watching netflix all day and your masters will send you $$$… as long as you keep eating them bugs.

Just don’t ever never demand to eat a damn steak.

Or we will have a problem.

Off to the gas chamber you freak! I zaid no meat!

[Smartprofit]

This is the biggest step to destroy the middle class. I mean the middle class weren’t alive much anyway but thanks to AI, job-wise whatever was left available for them will be gone soon.

Fear not however.

The Universal Basic Income will come to the rescue.

By 2030, everybody will be driving golf carts, eat insects, have their citizen scores and universal basic income. You won’t have to go to work. You will be at home watching netflix all day and your masters will send you $$$… as long as you keep eating them bugs.

Just don’t ever never demand to eat a damn steak.

Or we will have a problem.

Off to the gas chamber you freak! I zaid no meat!

This is just one of the solutions to the problem.  There are fears that many governments will choose another option to deal with this problem and will not pay their citizens a guaranteed basic income. 

The fact is that a guaranteed basic income does not solve the main problem - people need not only to be fed, but also to give them the meaning of life.  This is an existential problem! 

People who are bored are very dangerous people for the government of the country.  They can start to rebel and organize revolutions. 

Therefore, it is much easier to organize a large-scale war and turn all the citizens of the country into obedient and disciplined soldiers. 

This will give people a new meaning of life - to kill the enemy, not to be killed yourself and to defeat the enemy.

[franky1]

CERTAIN jobs can be taken over by bots and robots

for instance "call-centre staff"
instead of needing a human to talk to a customer and check if an item is dispatched or to process a refund/manufacturers repair delivery pick-up, a bot can take over this role

yes bots try do do the silly webchat FAQ already, but this will increase where chatGPT can answer more sophisticated questions customers have concerns of. where an AI could actually be programmed to interact with customer accounts and dispatch and company warehouses and stuff to automate more of the "customer service" side of a business

the next evolution is obviously the text to speech. where by a call centre can tell the location of a customer and adapt its voice pattern to match the accent and dialect of the customer.

it will see robots do more of the conveyor belt manufacturing(the repetitive jobs)
heck we can even see robots doing brick-laying on real estate developments

burger flipping at mcdonalds.
and car manufacturing(already so in the majority)

but when it comes to more skilled work where people need to think outside of the box, react to unforeseen changes, humans reign supreme..and thats because they have SKILLS and training that are there to aid their out of box reactions to unforeseen events

(note: colleges that train people to do mundane repetitive jobs that require no thinking.. is not really college/university worthy training.. basically if you have a diploma/degree in mcdonalds burger flipping. you have wasted 2-4 years of your life)

..
bots and robots only thrive when they are able to work within a finite amount of variables they can control. in the real world there are things where new variable comes into play and changes the dynamic of a task. and thats where humans will thrive

i feel that robots will be great at cleaning toilets. leaving people more time to get a real job changing the world. rather than staying within limits/constraints of small menial repetitive tasks

[o48o]

I'm personally skeptical on the ability of machine learning/neural networks to fully replace humans. I think it's more likely that it will boost productivity by performing the more simple and routine tasks, but there will still be the need for human touch. People will lose jobs because now a professional will be able to do the work of 2 professionals, but AI won't do the work of all professionals.

Well it won't be replacing humans anytime soon but many jobs sure as hell are going to be replaced by AI. At the start there will be need for humans to oversee AI and work as a fail safe,
but this is not just about AI:s taking jobs. Every disruptive technology always makes some jobs obsolete and often some new jobs are invented because of it. I can remember people talking about blockchain taking out the middle man as a good thing. Being a middle man is someone's job as well.

-cut-
The fact is that a guaranteed basic income does not solve the main problem - people need not only to be fed, but also to give them the meaning of life.  This is an existential problem! 
-cut-

Do you think that only paid jobs can give people meaning to life?
How about getting your meaning of life by being a decent human being and helping others?
By raising your kids and having more time with them?
Work on your emotional issues so you can be more stable and don't have as much issues with others.

There are ton of things in the field of self improvement you can work on if you don't have a job or other work to do.

[Findingnemo]

Anything related to creativity is at the risk of getting replaced by these AI programs in the near future ironically there won't be any new innovations if we cut down all the innovators and choose automation so it can go one or the other way.

We hear the universal basic income for everyone but it can't become real even if all the jobs took over by robots because why government is going to pay someone for doing nothing at all? They expect everyone to bring revenue to them or else they're just a burden to them.

[franky1]

the thing about job removal and job creation where people fear AI.. its not the AI fault

here is a question for you
who decided that people need to be away from home for an average of 40 hours a week to be a flatline "full time"
why cant "full time be 25 hours" (5 hours a day)

thus allowing more personal time to raise the kids and enjoy life in a fair work life balance

in 24 hours people sleep ~0 hours (15left)
in 24 hours people eat  ~1.5 hours (13.5left)
in 24 hours people use bathroom  ~0.5 hours (13left)
then minus off the 8 hours of a 40hour week (5 left)
where 1 hour is usually commuting to or from work (4 left)
if you include a bit of time to wake up and get your bearings in the morning ready for work, or get home from work and switch your work mind off (3left)

leaves just 3 hours personal time out of 24(or more precisely out of 13 hours awake and ready to live life)

working say 5 hours is a more fair work:life balance

if minimum wage based on cost of living is $10 an hour based on a 40hour work week to cover essential bills
then a LIVING WAGE would be $16 on a 5hour workday

[Bitstar_coin]

No doubt ChatGPT or AI has the potential to automate certain tasks that have traditionally been done by humans for such a long time now. They are programmed to replicate certain task but not every task that can be carried out by humans. At least not yet.
Jobs like customer service, data entry, content creation and similar jobs i believe can be successfuly done by AI.

Banks already using AI for some part of their services, but there is still the need for human presence and direction for these machines to work well. And yes, this will definitely result to people losing their jobs in those areas. The world is advancing in such a way that it becomes a threat to people's working abilities.

[xSkylarx]

Mostly those owners can benefit on this as it will lower their expenses through salary of the employees, though we still need people behind it like quality assurance as for sure there are some mistakes made by the AI that needs to be addressed by the human. But it is really sad truth that the possibility on this was very high and really can affect those in white collar jobs but it will open new sector of jobs for others. We cant really stop this so the best thing to do is we need to learn new skills apply for other type of work.

[so98nn]

Endless possibilities. Jobs are definitely going down at the movement and in the future when AI like this learns more than enough about the world, it will definitely take up the vacancies.

We say that at the end there will be some work which will always need human touch but come on, we went from black & white era to Colorful wireless era in no time! It's horrible to imagine how it's going to be even in the next 10 years.

Plus, population is endless. It is not going to stop. Births gonna happen, mortality is reducing with high tech medical research and thus earth gonna explode one day with jobless peeps everywhere.

[Smartprofit]

I'm personally skeptical on the ability of machine learning/neural networks to fully replace humans. I think it's more likely that it will boost productivity by performing the more simple and routine tasks, but there will still be the need for human touch. People will lose jobs because now a professional will be able to do the work of 2 professionals, but AI won't do the work of all professionals.

Well it won't be replacing humans anytime soon but many jobs sure as hell are going to be replaced by AI. At the start there will be need for humans to oversee AI and work as a fail safe,
but this is not just about AI:s taking jobs. Every disruptive technology always makes some jobs obsolete and often some new jobs are invented because of it. I can remember people talking about blockchain taking out the middle man as a good thing. Being a middle man is someone's job as well.

-cut-
The fact is that a guaranteed basic income does not solve the main problem - people need not only to be fed, but also to give them the meaning of life.  This is an existential problem! 
-cut-

Do you think that only paid jobs can give people meaning to life?
How about getting your meaning of life by being a decent human being and helping others?
By raising your kids and having more time with them?
Work on your emotional issues so you can be more stable and don't have as much issues with others.

There are ton of things in the field of self improvement you can work on if you don't have a job or other work to do.

Yes, I agree with you. 

However, I am not sure that this is how geopoliticians who develop methods for managing large groups of people think.  Do these people really think that the world needs a large number of honest and decent people with a lot of free time?  I'm not sure. 

For example, on a warship, it is believed that at any given moment the sailor should be busy with some business.  Idleness on the ship is unacceptable! 

Many politicians in non-democratic countries also believe that people should be constantly engaged in the struggle for existence.  It can be a war with the enemy or hard, exhausting work under capitalism. 

If a person is busy competing in a large company, then he no longer has time and energy left for a revolution and attempts to overthrow the existing government.

[vv181]

Humans will always be complemented by technology. It will not fully replace them, but, human is the one who utilized it further. Let those who have concerns be doubted. But remember that the ability to adapt to the current change will always be essential things for humans.

Without a doubt that labour works or creative works will be handed over to AI, not fully, but to those who can utilise it. There is nothing wrong with it. As long as it gives efficiency and is effective. On one hand, personally, creative or artistic works require the human touch. Suppose an art generated by an artist and one from generative AI, even if the result is hardly noticeable or has similar tastes, knowing which art generated by the AI will reduce my satisfaction.

I also believe that laborious work currently still requires human intervention, the current AI advancements are in their infancy. So it always the main matter is that humans are complemented, not, replaced.

[mvdheuvel1983]

I'm personally skeptical on the ability of machine learning/neural networks to fully replace humans. I think it's more likely that it will boost productivity by performing the more simple and routine tasks, but there will still be the need for human touch. People will lose jobs because now a professional will be able to do the work of 2 professionals, but AI won't do the work of all professionals.

I do not think so.
Yes, ChatGPT will disrupt a lot of things in the world of work, but I do not totally agree that it will have any serious effect on white-collar work.
What I think will happen will is that only those without a college degree or those who do not upgrade their skills that will be affected adversely.
Well, the next five years is not far anymore, we wait to see if we would even become half-robots then.

[o48o]

Yes, I agree with you. 
However, I am not sure that this is how geopoliticians who develop methods for managing large groups of people think.  Do these people really think that the world needs a large number of honest and decent people with a lot of free time?  I'm not sure.

As long as everyone of them plays a part of not being a destructive member of society it wouldn't hurt anyone, most likely work i described would show up in statistics of having more stable society.
 Everything else would work pretty much similarly as it is now, it's not like we would be removing capitalism by universal income. Political scientist just study the subject, they don't make any rules but in my scenario most people would want to make more money anyway as we live in a capitalistic society, so they would either invent jobs, or re-educate themselves for new jobs.

For example, on a warship, it is believed that at any given moment the sailor should be busy with some business.  Idleness on the ship is unacceptable! 

But now you are talking about people who have work. And if you want less "idleness" in terms of working for your government to be running well oiled. There might as well be mandaroty civil service period in one's life for educating people in case of state wide emergencies so that logistics of workforce would work better when needed.

Many politicians in non-democratic countries also believe that people should be constantly engaged in the struggle for existence.  It can be a war with the enemy or hard, exhausting work under capitalism. 
If a person is busy competing in a large company, then he no longer has time and energy left for a revolution and attempts to overthrow the existing government.

Problems on those countries are often very complex and very hard to solve. And as an outsiders we can only so much.

[Leviathan.007]

It's all about AI and the topic of destabilizing human work by AI is old because we all know that AI still need human to work and in order to have AI with the good performance you will need to provide data to your ai machine and these data is important to be monitored and gathered with a huge amount of data you can have good results, also you should consider that even if the ChatGPT got unsupervised systems and won't need the human to supervise it still need a human for monitoring data and for debugging the machine. So in the worst case, people should adopt their jobs and none will lose anything.

[stompix]

If your job is threatened by an AI that writes articles, then it means you were already in danger years ago.

Yet an extraordinary downside is also easy to see: What happens when services like ChatGPT start putting copywriters, journalists, customer-service agents, paralegals, coders, and digital marketers out of a job?

So, copywriters, journalists, and customer service, since when are those considered "skilled office workers".
Let's look right here at the news that makes it to the forum, all those blogs all those so-called whitepapers, and everything, does it look to you like journalists these days are "highly skilled"? Have you recently called customer support and had zero doubts the guy wasn't at his first job and he somehow got to the wrong desk at the wrong company?

The whole ChatGPT is blown out of proportion, it will replace things that were already replaceable since they already lacked creativity.

What class of skilled AI really threatens to put out of business or at least shrink it has nothing to do with freelancer content creators, it's actual tasks that can't be performed anymore by humans despite their skills on the same level. In our company, we went down from having 20 guys in charge of route planning to 2 managing data and 4 of them in charge of monitoring and checking the results the program generates, right now the soft we use can generate routes and delivery times for a shitload of trucks in minutes, I can't really say more about it but it can actually change the instruction for an entire deposit crew and their tasks the split moment a report of cargo not making based only on constant traffic data, until a call operator would have talked to three guys in charge noted down and typed instructions the program has done it 1000 times already.

There are hundreds of other jobs where an AI is taking over, from farming to architecture and manufacturing, the content thingy was blown out of proportion because the ones in charge of the news are the ones feeling threatened now.
But as I said, if you can be replaced by ChatGPT you were far from being a skilled worker and pillar of the company.

[wiss19]

I'm personally skeptical on the ability of machine learning/neural networks to fully replace humans. I think it's more likely that it will boost productivity by performing the more simple and routine tasks, but there will still be the need for human touch. People will lose jobs because now a professional will be able to do the work of 2 professionals, but AI won't do the work of all professionals.

I do not think so.
Yes, ChatGPT will disrupt a lot of things in the world of work, but I do not totally agree that it will have any serious effect on white-collar work.
What I think will happen will is that only those without a college degree or those who do not upgrade their skills that will be affected adversely.
Well, the next five years is not far anymore, we wait to see if we would even become half-robots then.

It won't affect their jobs but it will rather help them to be more productive at work. They can now finish their task faster with the help of the AI or ChatGpt. Those who don't have a college degree has a limited knowledge but they can also use those tools to help them with their designated tasks. In the era that we have today, it's not about the college degree that matters but it's about how skilful or wise you are. Internet and software are now accesible. We can able to use them at our advantage.

I think I am already fine to have on these AI powered tools and I don't want to become a half-robot. That sounds scary lol but that was possible. I heard inventors like Elon musk are now inventing a chip that will be implanted inside a human body.

[blockman]

There will really have a lot of jobs that will help productivity through chatgpt or any other the same niche of AI. But I agree, that this time it may be on hype but getting on some logical jobs that really need the thinking of a person, it won't be able to replace it. Ai/Machine learning is still in its infancy and I'm very optimistic about it because it automated a lot of jobs but doesn't mean they'll wholly replace people to work for it. Maybe, to reduce the cost as it will lessen the personnel for such jobs but not entirely.