Will ChatGPT take your job?

If you’ve spent any time browsing social media feeds over the last few months (who hasn’t), you’ve probably heard about ChatGPT. The mesmerising and mind-blowing chatbot, developed by OpenAI, is a nifty little AI that can spit out highly convincing, human-sounding text in response to user-generated prompts.

Barely being released into the wild, ChatGPT, has already generated millions of conversations. The typical user is at the same time astonished and afraid. Is humankind a step closer to being replaced by machines?

The Guardian was one of the few newspapers bold enough to say that programmers and journalists could all be out of a job in just a few years. Those are the sort of clickbait statements that have been around for literally 100 years as people have predicted machines will take someone’s job. In one of the first presidential interviews on television, President Kennedy complained that too many workers were being thrown out of the labour force because of automation. I’m not trying to say that ChatGPT isn’t really cool and will likely impact a wide variety of jobs. I just don’t think it’ll wipe out entire occupations.

While ChatGPT might replace some aspects of coding, such as writing generic functions or boilerplate code, it won’t supplant programmers altogether. That’s because a programmer’s job requires more than coding.

The rise of AI coders such as ChatGPT will also lead to an increased demand for software developers versed in data science principles, who can design, build and test applications using data science platforms and languages such as Go and Python.

Anything that allows us to multitask, and create better software faster should be welcomed in any engineer’s toolkit. As a developer, you can use these tools to rapidly build amazing technology without having to do the same robotic tasks that really don’t add time and educational value.

It is safe to say that AI will not take my job, nor yours. This has also rarely happened in the past. The information technologies of the past decades typically did not replace human jobs or functionalities but impacted how we did our jobs.

Automation has historically targeted routine tasks that are easy to replicate, but it will largely affect people depending on their occupation. The routine parts of my job are the ones I hate doing and would love to automate! Instead of spending an hour proofreading my posts, I can ask a chatbot to do it. This significantly reduces the cost of writing the newsletter and allows me to increase my output. Since the newsletter only comes out once per week, I could write another article each week or I may just start a podcast instead.

Of course, many writing jobs could technically be automated like instruction manual writing, copywriting for a company website, or providing automated tech support. However, even in these instances, there is a significant chance that most of the time, these jobs would be done worse by a bot. Accuracy errors mean that, though it could perhaps look like it was writing a useful manual or providing helpful advice, this has no bearing on whether it actually could.

Another feather in the cap of “ChatGPT won’t replace you just yet” is the abiding desire of humans to have other humans in the loop. As Roderick Kramer, a social psychologist at Stanford University has noted, “we’re social beings from the get-go: We’re born to be engaged and to engage others, which is what trust is largely about. That has been an advantage in our struggle for survival.” Beginning with the first time we lock eyes with our mothers and begin to mimic their expressions, we crave and cultivate the security that comes with human contact.

Overall, the impact of AI on the demand for labour is complex and will vary depending on a range of factors. As AI technology continues to advance, it will be important for policymakers and business leaders to carefully consider its potential effects on the economy and the workforce.