Does ChatGPT mean robots are coming for skilled jobs?

Will robots take away our jobs?

People have been asking that question for an astonishingly long time. Regency-era British economist David Ricardo added to the third edition of his classic “Principles of Political Economy,” published in 1821, a chapter titled “On Machinery,” in which he tried to show how the technologies of the early Industrial Revolution could, at least initially, hurt workers.

At the level of the economy as a whole, the verdict is clear: So far, machines haven’t done away with the need for workers. U.S. workers are almost five times as productive as they were in the early postwar years, but there has been no long-term upward trend in unemployment.

That said, technology can eliminate particular kinds of jobs. It’s true the jobs that disappear in the face of technological progress have generally been replaced by other jobs. But that doesn’t mean the process has been painless. Individual workers may not find it easy to change jobs, especially if the new jobs are in different places. They may find their skills devalued; in some cases, technological change can uproot communities and their way of life.

This kind of dislocation has, as I said, been a feature of modern societies for at least two centuries. But something new may be happening now.

In the past, the jobs replaced by technology tended to involve manual labor. Machines replaced muscles. On the other hand, there has been ever-growing demand for knowledge workers — people engaged in nonrepetitive problem solving.

What if machines can take over a large chunk of what we have thought of as knowledge work?

Last week, research company OpenAI released — to enormous buzz from tech circles — a program called ChatGPT, which can carry out what look like natural-language conversations. You can ask questions and get responses that are startlingly clear and even seem well-informed.

ChatGPT is only the latest example of technology that seems able to carry out tasks that not long ago required the services not just of human beings but of humans with substantial formal education.

You can argue that what we often call artificial intelligence isn’t really intelligence. Indeed, it may be a long time before machines can be truly creative or offer deep insight. But then, how much of what humans do is truly creative or deeply insightful?

So quite a few knowledge jobs may be eminently replaceable. What will this mean for the economy?

It is difficult to predict exactly how AI will impact the demand for knowledge workers, as it will likely vary, depending on the industry and specific job tasks. However, it is possible that in some cases, AI and automation may be able to perform certain knowledge-based tasks more efficiently than humans, potentially reducing the need for some knowledge workers. This could include tasks such as data analysis, research and report writing. However, it is also worth noting that AI and automation may also create new job opportunities for knowledge workers, particularly in fields related to AI development and implementation.

OK, I didn’t write the paragraph you just read; ChatGPT did, in response to the question “How will AI affect the demand for knowledge workers?” The giveaway, to me at least, is that I still refuse to use “impact” as a verb. And it didn’t explicitly lay out why we should, overall, expect no impact on aggregate employment. But it was arguably better than what many humans would have written.

In the long run, productivity gains in knowledge industries, like past gains in traditional industries, will make society richer and improve our lives. But in the long run, we are all dead, and even before that, some of us may find ourselves unemployed or earning less than we expected, given our expensive educations.