An online survey of 1000 business leaders suggest that ChatGPT and AI systems will often be involved in the future interview process after companies use the AI to remove workers from some jobs in codewriting, customer support, research and content creation.
The level of employment impact is still small as companies also got rid of workers when they shifted to online selling and traditional automation. Walmart recently said that 65 percent of its stores automated within the next three years. This was days after laying off 2,000 employees who fulfill online orders. Walmart ($388 billion valuation with 1.7 million employees) at its quarterly investor call said they will invest heavily in automation to speed up orders at its e-commerce fulfillment facilities. Walmart is hoping to have about 65 percent of its stores automated within the next three years, it has announced – just days after revealing it would be laying off 2,000 employees who fulfill online orders.
Walmart lags behind Amazon in automating warehouses and its supply chain.
Blue-collar workers will lose their job to a robot and regular automation but ChatGPT and AI will impact the white collar jobs. There will be no need to tell any laid-off blue collar worker to learn to code. Elite programmers and product managers will be using ChatGPT and copilot to boost their productivity. Low-level coders will mostly be made redundant. Those who are triggered by the advice “Learn to code” will stop hearing it because this will become useless advice.
Forty-eight percent of companies have replaced workers with ChatGPT since it became available in November of last year.
In the future, ChatGPT may lead to more layoffs according to business leaders. When asked if ChatGPT will lead to any workers being laid off by the end of 2023, 33% of business leaders say ‘definitely,’ while 26% say ‘probably.’
Within 5 years, 63% of business leaders say ChatGPT will ‘definitely’ (32%) or ‘probably’ (31%) lead to workers being laid off.
The survey commissioned by ResumeBuilder.com and conducted online by survey platform Pollfish on February 15, 2023. In total, 1,000 U.S. business leaders were surveyed.
The conmpanies have mostly reported saving $75000 or less which would indicate small numbers of jobs cuts or productivity improvements. The 33% who definitely think ChatGPT will lead to layoffs are not necessarily planning their own layoffs but could have the expectation that others will layoff employees. However, if the survey is partially accurate, then 20% of companies using ChatGPT and the new AI to reduce the workforce would still be significant. It is also highly important to master the new AI.
Appropriate respondents were found through a screening question. They had to answer that their company currently uses or plans to use ChatGPT. Additionally, respondents had to meet demographic criteria, including age (25+), income (50k+), number of employees (2+), employment status, and organizational role.
Key findings:
49% of companies currently use ChatGPT; 30% plan to
48% of companies using ChatGPT say it’s replaced workers
25% companies using ChatGPT have already saved $75k+
93% of current users say they plan to expand their use of ChatGPT
90% of business leaders say chatGPT experience is a beneficial skill for job seekers
Companies currently using ChatGPT, 66% use it for writing code, while 58% use it for copywriting/content creation, 57% for customer support, and 52% for creating summaries of meetings or documents.
The majority of companies also use ChatGPT to facilitate hiring; 77% say it helps them write job descriptions, 66% draft interview requisitions, and 65% respond to applicants.
Overall, most business leaders are impressed by ChatGPT’s work. Fifty-five percent say the quality of work produced by ChatGPT is ‘excellent,’ while 34% say it’s ‘very good.’
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
It won’t be easy. People worked in their field for quite some time and had spent a lot of time learning particular skills. Now things are changing so fast that lots of occupations will become obsolete. What will someone do, when his skill set and experience won’t be needed? Start from a scratch?
Still a long way from physical labor being solved by robots.
Warehouse labor and assembly line perhaps, but that was started 20 years ago. Still 10 years away
Field electricians, plumbers, car mechanics, hvac, carpenters, airplane frame and power, etc. – where are the data sets to train for those? Training manuals teach nothing about dexterity. Talk about 10,000s of edge cases.
Still 20 years away. Society has a while to adjust…
I have a hard time believing that these companies were anything like a representative sample of the business world: Something like 66% of them used it for “writing code”, and most businesses don’t write code! So, just based on that, you know they’re not representative.
I with you on that, Brett. Huge corporations with large IT departments will get rid of some jobs using GPT4. But the vast majority of companies will not, at least for a couple of years. (*maybe in the future, though).
What will probably happen is a huge leap in productivity across the board. Bad coders will get better. Bad accountants will get better. Bad paralegals will get better. Bad engineers will get better. Etc., etc. etc.
Good professionals will get better. Great professionals will get better.
While history may not repeat itself, the long march of history shows that technology increases jobs on the net. Productivity goes up. Creativity goes up. Yes, there is job displacement. Technology has been displacing workers for 200 years.
I live near a company called United Wholesale Mortgage – which processes mortgagees for independent brokers. They’ve got something like 7000+ employees in a big campus – mostly sitting in from of computer screens and processing mortgages in parallel. Most of them do a handful of jobs that are all likely replaceable by a couple dozen different LLM AI’s plumbed together running in the cloud. The AIs could connect to the same software they use now thru API calls other LLMs write. This doesn’t need further advances just implementing what the current models can do.
There are of course millions of other jobs in banks, credit unions, mortgage entail companies, credit card providers etc.
Maybe, just maybe, we could stop taxing citizens so much that two incomes are needed to survive? Then one could stay home and raise children, educate them and care for the home.
The other could make enough to pay the bills and save a bit for vacations and the like.
I know, it sounds crazy. How could something like that ever work.
Any reason why my comments are moderated in to silence?
The comments system is ph-uc-ked up. Sometimes I post one or two short comments without a problem and then the third elaborate one disappears without a trace.
The comments system is crazy. Sometimes I post one or two short comments without a problem and then the third elaborate one disappears without a trace.
Gpchat remove it after check probably 😅
Yep. Low/passable quality programming will be basically free.
Just by whispering some incantation to the AI, you will have an app or a webpage. With detailed instructions to deploy it and run it from the AIs themselves.
Complex stuff will still exist and require experts, but the generic front-end and back-end company jobs will be basically gone in 5 years.
All the formalization of business intelligence flows will be driven by computers, with now unimaginable amounts of software tools and flows created and later thrown aside on a whim.
This would be unmaintainable by humans, but that won’t be a problem either, with AIs taking care of documenting their creations and doing their validation, better than any human ever had, ensuring that a later iteration understands the product and can interface with it and/or replace it.
Gee, programs can even become fully self-healing, self-modifying, self-improving with AI’s capabilities, it’s emerging now.
Feels a bit bad for anyone formed in CS to say this: but the future of CS jobs is as bleak as any other. There are only so many technical jobs requiring the depth and expertise to continue being driven by humans.
Yes, you will have the code for the app. It will not likely be compilable and runnable right away. Plus, you need to have people asking the right questions. I dare anyone without software development background create a working application with an AI chat. It is just a glorified search engine is all
Nobody needs gainfully employed customers anyway.
Bureaucrat functotums are rarely gainful.
If you define all white collar jobs as bureaucrat functotums then the only productive people in the world are CEOs and janitors. The janitors may have a few more years before robots take their jobs and CEOs will last until AI acquires motivation and ambition but it’s hard to market a product or service to just those groups.
Customers will also be automated.
Robots and AI will have to be granted a universal basic income. This sounds more likely than the idea that I will ever get one. 😂
Not buying chat GPT making code. From previous article we saw it failing coding tests and barely making improvements. Now we are supposed to believe that the #1 use is coding?
The generative and fractional nature of this AI seems ill suited to actual coding. Maybe they are lumping scripting in with coding? Script kiddie stuff could be doable because who tests their scripts? Maybe they are including Excel macros with coding?
The previous example of using GPT to write unit tests was laughable. How does GPT know what the correct answer is? It lacks comprehension.
Whatever, hype away!
Well, again, in 2007 Stuart Elliot was already predicting 30% or more in “occupational displacement” by 2030.
Of course, he also suggested a number of partial remedies, primarily in revamping the educational process, and 16 years later, and only 7 away from 2030, no one has stepped up to the plate.
Maybe ChatGPT, or one of its competitors, can figure out how to ease the pain of the coming disruption.
UBI is the only answer, without it, endless riots, everything will burn.
Why do you think most governments of advanced nations are moving to a more authoritarian model? They know what’s coming.
The problem could be too many people with no way to make a living for themselves and their families. One answer might be Universal basic income. Another might be to drastically lower the number of people. War and disease are two of the methods that have traditionally been used to accomplish that.
How it will turn out will in large part be determined by the very small number of people who actually control the levers of society. Barring, of course, some massive emergence of artificial general intelligence.