It’s easy to worry that machines have taken over. Companies such as IBM and British telecoms company BT have cited artificial intelligence as a reason for layoffs. And new tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E help everyone understand what’s wrong. ability of artificial intelligence itself. one of the recent studies Researchers from OpenAI (the startup behind ChatGPT) and the University of Pennsylvania concluded that for about 80% of jobs, the technology behind such tools could be used to automate at least 10% of the tasks. I’m here.
“Anyone I talk to, super-smart people, doctors, lawyers, CEOs, other economists, their brains are like, ‘Oh, how can we replace what humans are doing with generative AI?’ ?’” said Professor Erik Brynjolfsson of the university. Stanford Human-Centric AI Lab.
But it’s not the only option, he said. “Another thing I’d like people to do more of is think about what new things can be done now that haven’t been done before. Obviously, that’s a much harder question.” is also “the most valuable place,” he added.
How technology makers design AI tools, how business leaders use them, and how policymakers regulate AI tools will determine how generative AI will ultimately impact jobs. says Brynjolfsson and other economists. And not all options are necessarily bleak for workers.
AI can complement human labor rather than replace it. For example, many companies are leveraging AI to automate their call centers. But Fortune 500 companies that provide business software are instead using tools like ChatGPT to give employees real-time suggestions on how to engage with customers. Brynjolfsson and his co-authors compared call center employees who used the tool with those who did not. They found that the tool increased productivity by an average of 14%, with most of the gain coming from low-skilled workers. The group that used this tool also had higher customer sentiment and lower employee turnover.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology economics professor David Autor said AI could potentially be used to provide “immediate expertise” in jobs such as healthcare delivery, software development, law and skilled repair. Stated. “This provides an opportunity to enable more workers to do valuable jobs that rely on some of their expertise,” he said.
Employees can focus on different tasks. The number of bank tellers has increased as ATMs have automated the tasks of paying cash and taking deposits. Analysis by James Bessen, a researcher at the Boston University School of Law. This was partly because bank branches needed fewer workers, while the cost of opening branches became cheaper and banks opened more branches. But banks have also changed job descriptions. Since the ATM, tellers have focused less on counting cash and more on building relationships with customers selling products such as credit cards. Few jobs can be fully automated with generative AI. However, using AI tools for some tasks could augment workers’ work on tasks that cannot be automated.
New technology can lead to new jobs. farming employed In 1900, they made up nearly 42 percent of the workforce, but by 2000 they were just 2 percent due to advances in automation and technology. The large reduction in agricultural jobs did not lead to widespread unemployment. Instead, technology has created many new jobs. Early 20th-century farmers would never have imagined computer coding, genetic engineering, and trucking. In an analysis using census data, Autor and his co-authors found that 60 percent of today’s occupational specialties did not exist 80 years ago.
Of course, there is no guarantee that a worker will be eligible for a new job or that they will get a good job. None of this happens out of the blue, says Daron Acemoglu, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-author of Power and Progress: Our 1,000-Year Struggle Over Technology & Prosperity.
“If we make the right choices, we can create new types of jobs, which are crucial both for wage growth and for real productivity gains,” Acemoglu said. . “But nothing like this is even possible if we don’t make the right choices.” — Sarah Kessler
in case you missed
Martha’s exemplary behavior. Lifestyle entrepreneur Martha Stewart became the oldest person to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue this week. Stewart, 81, told The Times that posing with her confidence was a “huge challenge,” but two months of Pilates helped her. She is not the first person over the age of 60 to receive this honor. Last year, Elon Musk’s mother May Musk made the cover at age 74.
TikTok block. Montana became the first state to ban Chinese short-video apps, banning app stores from offering TikTok within state borders from January 1. Enforcing the ban is expected to be difficult, and TikTok users in the state are suing the government. The move violates First Amendment rights and provides a glimpse of the potential backlash if the federal government tries to block her TikTok nationwide.
Banker responsibility game. Greg Becker, former CEO of Silicon Valley Bank, said: Condemns ‘rumours and misunderstandings’ In his first public comment since the financial institution collapsed in March, he addressed the under-funding of deposits. Becker and former top executives at the failed Signature bank also told a Senate committee investigating their role in the bank failure: won’t give back millions of dollars on pay.
A Brief History of Constraint-Seeking Tech CEOs
When OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman testified in Congress this week calling for regulation of generative artificial intelligence, some lawmakers applauded it: “historic” movement. In fact, calling on lawmakers for new rules is a move straight out of tech industry strategy. Silicon Valley’s most powerful executives have long been in Washington to shape the rules and at the same time tirelessly unleash some of the world’s most powerful and innovative technologies to demonstrate their commitment to the rules.
One reason, Bruce Melman, a political consultant and former Bush administration technology policy officer, told DealBook that federal rules are much easier to manage than state-by-state regulations. That’s what it means. Clarifying regulations also increases investor confidence in the sector, he added.
This strategy seems sensible, but if history is a helpful guide, reality can be more troublesome than rhetoric.
-
In December 2021, bankrupt crypto exchange FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was one of six executives to testify before the House about digital assets and call for regulatory clarity. . He told lawmakers that his company had just submitted a proposal for a “unified joint system.” A year later, Bankman his Freed business went bankrupt and he faced charges of criminal fraud and illegal campaign contributions.
-
In 2019, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wrote the following op-ed for The Washington Post:The internet needs new rules‘ based on the company’s failures in content management, election integrity, privacy and data management. Two years later, independent researchers found that misinformation is more prevalent on the platform than it was in 2016, despite the company’s billions of dollars spent eradicating it.
-
In 2018, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said he generally opposed but supported regulation. Stricter data privacy rules, “It’s time to think collectively about what we can do.” But in order to keep its business in China, one of its largest markets, Apple handed over most of its control over customer data to the government as part of its operating requirements in China.
Buzzword of the week: “Argospeak”
Platforms like TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter use algorithms to identify and moderate problematic content. To circumvent these digital moderators and allow free exchange of taboo topics, a language code was developed. It is called “Argospeak”.
“Online, the language arms race is heating up, but it’s not clear who’s winning.” Roger J. Kreutz writes, Professor of Psychology at the University of Memphis. Posts about sensitive issues such as politics, sex, and suicide can be flagged and removed by algorithms, resulting in ‘seg’ and ‘mascara’ for sex and ‘unfortunate’ for death. Creative misspellings and stand-ins will be used, such as in the case of “alive”, “treasury”. for homophobia. Kurz has a history of responding cryptically to prohibitions, for example in 19th-century English Cockney rhyming slang and allegorical language used to evade censorship in Tsarist Russia. Point out that there is a certain “Isopian”.
Algorithms aren’t the only ones that can’t recognize code. Especially euphemisms and misspellings ubiquitous in marginalized communities. However, hidden language can also escape the human eye and can be potentially misleading online. In February, celebrity Julia Fox found herself in an awkward exchange with a sexual assault victim. misunderstand the post I had to issue a public apology for inappropriately reacting to what I thought was a question about “mascara” and a discussion about makeup.
thank you for reading!
Please let us know what you think. Please email your comments and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com.
