The revolutionary AI software, ChatGPT, is lighting up the internet. With OpenAI in San Francisco and billionaire Elon Musk as one of its founders, it’s no surprise why people are buzzing about this large language model that has been trained on a massive amount of data to think like us humans, producing eerily human-like text with every prompt.,
Further proving the might of ChatGPT, Microsoft recently declared a colossal investment into its technology while simultaneously slashing 10,000 jobs from their staff. This has caused an uproar among experts regarding future white-collar job obsolescence that AI could bring forward, even within OpenAI’s team itself.
OpenAI executive Shi Yan warned The New York Post that no industry is immune from the potential disruption of AI. This includes jobs like financial advisers, lawyers, interns, and designers.
An example of this type of job obsolescence can be seen in Princeton student Edward Tian’s app GPTZero, which identifies when an AI machine has generated text or if it has been written manually by humans. Mr. Tian said that AI can do the work faster and more efficiently for many of these jobs than humans.
In addition, law professors at the University of Minnesota ran an experiment last semester where they used ChatGPT to generate answers to exams and graded them blindingly against human tests. The results were featured in a study by Jonathan Choi, Kristin Hickman, Amy Monahan, and Daniel Schwarcz.
The results showed that ChatGPT’s average C+ performance was lower than the humans’ B+ average. However, it would still be enough to earn a law degree if applied across the curriculum. Lead study author Jonathan Choi said that “ChatGPT would be a pretty mediocre law student.”
It’s not just the legal realm seeing the potential danger of AI. Tech marketing agency Codeword announced they are using AI “interns” to help with necessary tasks that can become tedious and time-consuming for humans. However, in the wrong hands, ChatGPT can turn into a huge problem.
With its November 2022 public launch quickly approaching, ChatGPT has been put to the test, receiving a passing grade with several high-level law school exams at the University of Minnesota. The system averaged a C+ on student papers and showed a promising ability to work through almost any problem.
What’s more, this artificial intelligence software has already amassed close to a million users in its first week, further establishing itself as one of the leading AI bots on the market. Cybercriminals have already successfully used its power to create malware and fake chatbots to phish scam unsuspecting customers.
OpenAI’s newest product is a tool called DALL-E that can generate images from user prompts. According to OpenAI executive Pranav Hegde, this could potentially threaten the graphic design industry and artists. By feeding the bots artists’ work, they could replicate their designs and create even more detailed work faster than any human being. They can plagiarize works and make tangible threats to the intellectual property of artists.
These recent developments have only added to fears that ChatGPT could automate specific labor-intensive jobs and even render them obsolete in some cases. This has caused an uproar among experts who worry about AI’s potential impact on our society — both positive and negative.
Whether ChatGPT will lead to the massive unemployment of white-collar workers or revolutionize how we work remains to be seen. However, what is certain is that this technology is an insight into the rapidly changing world and how it could shape our future.
