Generative AI could replace 300 million workers – 03/27/2023 – Market

The latest advances in artificial intelligence could lead to the automation of a quarter of the work done in the United States and the euro zone, according to research by Goldman Sachs.

The investment bank said on Monday that “generative” AI systems like ChatGPT, capable of creating content indistinguishable from human production, could trigger a productivity boom that would eventually increase the annual global gross domestic product by 7 % over a period of ten years.

But if the technology delivers on its promise, it will also bring “significant disruption” to the job market, exposing the equivalent of 300 million full-time workers in major economies to automation, according to Joseph Briggs and Devesh Kodnani, authors of the study. Lawyers and administrative staff would be among those most at risk of becoming expendable.

They estimate that about two-thirds of jobs in the United States and Europe are exposed to some degree of AI automation, based on data about tasks commonly performed in thousands of occupations.

Most people would have less than half of their workload automated and would likely stay in their jobs, with some of their time freed up for more productive pursuits.

In the United States, this is expected to apply to 63% of the workforce, the researchers calculated. Another 30%, who work in physical or outdoor jobs, would not be affected, although their work may be susceptible to other forms of automation.

But about 7% of US workers are in jobs where at least half of their tasks can be done by generative AI and are vulnerable to replacement.

Goldman said the survey showed a similar impact in Europe. On a global level, as manual jobs account for a larger share of employment in the developing world, it is estimated that about a fifth of work could be done by AI — or about 300 million full-time jobs in large economies.

The report will spur debate on the potential of AI technologies both to revive productivity growth in the rich world and to create a new class of dispossessed white-collar workers, who are at risk of suffering a fate similar to that of industrial workers in the 1990s. from 1980.

Goldman’s estimates of impact are more conservative than those of some academic studies, which have included the effects of a broader range of related technologies.

A paper published last week by OpenAI, creators of GPT-4, found that 80% of the US workforce could have at least 10% of their tasks performed by generative AI, based on analysis by human researchers and the grand model. machine language (LLM) company.

Police agency Europol also warned this week that rapid advances in generative AI could help online fraudsters and cybercriminals, so “shadowy LLMs (…) could become an important criminal business model in the future”.

Goldman said that if corporate investment in AI continued to grow at a similar pace to software investment in the 1990s, investment in the US alone could approach 1% of the country’s GDP by 2030.

Goldman’s estimates are based on an analysis of US and European data on tasks commonly performed in thousands of different occupations. The researchers assumed that the AI ​​would be capable of tasks like filling out tax returns for small businesses; evaluate complex insurance claims; or document the results of criminal investigations.

They did not foresee AI being adopted in more sensitive tasks, such as making judicial decisions, checking the conditions of patients in intensive care or studying international tax laws.

Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves