TOArtificial intelligence is exciting everyone. It will end or improve the world, depending on your optimism/pessimism. The latest uproar was triggered by the launch of ChatGPT – the progression of the so-called generative AI, which not only analyzes data, but also creates new content (in this case, written text).
There has been much speculation about what this could mean for education (the end of courses?), but my focus is on the implications for the labor market. now the first serious investigation on that front it has arrived. The economists ran an online experiment in which some 450 professionals completed a writing task of the kind they would do in their day job, with only a few having access to ChatGPT to help them.
Let’s start with the good news. Those who received help completed the task 37% faster and produced higher quality results (as assessed by humans unaware who had AI support). The paper also defies the trend of saying that any new technology will always increase inequality: ChatGPT improved the quality of results for workers with less ability.
The research posited that “AI will eliminate labor concerns” because it largely substituted for human effort rather than allowing workers to use existing skills to produce better results. And workers understood the danger: Those using ChatGPT were more concerned after AI replaced employees.
But don’t panic just yet. The researchers found that few professionals adopted ChatGPT in their daily jobs after the experiment. Because? Because when it comes to writing in real jobs, time-sensitive or company-specific knowledge is required that AI, trained on older, broad information, cannot provide. So AI might speed up our work, but maybe we humans aren’t done yet.
