Until recently, discussions about machines replacing human jobs focused mainly on automation and robots but the emergence of ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence (AI) models has heightened concerns about millions of job losses in the next five years.
These AI models are likely to replace human workers in industries such as IT, software, tech, media, creative agencies, and digital economy platforms, sparing only the agriculture sector. IBM's CEO predicts that up to 30% of jobs could be replaced by AI and automation within five years.
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna told Bloomberg, "I could easily see 30 per cent of jobs getting replaced by AI and automation over a five-year period." The tech giant has around 26,000 workers so nearly 7,800 jobs could be replaced by AI in the coming years.
According to Arundhati Bhattacharya, CEO and Chairperson for Salesforce India and a former SBI Chairperson, generative artificial intelligence has a blessing in disguise as it can take away a lot of the grunge or repetitive work in India, and leave people to actually perform more creative work.
While AI can eliminate repetitive work and free up people to do more creative work, it could replace programming and journalism jobs and create more competition. According to a report by global investment bank Goldman Sachs, AI could replace the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs and Generative AI, able to create content indistinguishable from human work, is "a major advancement".
Global technology company Zoho's CEO and co-founder Sridhar Vembu said, "ChatGPT, GPT4, and other AI being created today will first affect the jobs of many programmers". According to Carl Benedikt Frey, future-of-work director at the Oxford Martin School, Oxford University, the only thing he is sure of is that "there is no way of knowing how many jobs will be replaced by generative AI".
The University of Pennsylvania and OpenAI have found that approximately 80% of the workforce could have at least 10% of their work tasks affected by the introduction of large language models (LLMs) such as Generative Pretrained Transformers (GPTs), while 19% could see at least 50% of their tasks impacted.
Agriculture remains unaffected
Jobs in agriculture, mining, and manufacturing are the least exposed to generative AI, while jobs in information processing industries, like IT, are the most exposed.
AI is already being used in finance, and experts predict that 90% of news will be written by machines in 15 years. It is crucial for the future workforce to learn AI skills to prepare for the impact of AI on the job market.
Kristian Hammond, chief scientist of Natural Sciences, told the BBC that in 15 years, "90 per cent of news will be written by machines".
Some tech firms have started hiring "prompt managers" to help with certain office tasks via AI chatbots. AI appears to be fast turning into a monster that will knock at our doors any time and according to experts, it is pertinent for the future workforce to learn AI skills.
(With inputs from IANS)
