workers — think analysts, coders and even the odd opinion columnist — going the way of the medieval scribe?
Shareholders don’t seem too bothered, as seen by Meta Platforms’ recent whopping US$197-billion one-day market-cap gain, and neither do politicians eager to catch up in the tech race. After all, with unemployment still low, no Luddites in sight and plenty of demand, it’s easier to talk up the potential for AI to boost productivity and economic growth. The technology will not be a “mass destroyer of jobs”, Bank of England boss Andrew Bailey recently told the BBC.
Yet simply hoping for the best is an inadequate response to the potential upheaval AI could unleash in the labour market. A raft of research is starting to scratch the surface of what goes on when AI is rolled out into the world of white-collar drudgery. Not all of it is pretty. One study looking at Microsoft and OpenAI’s GitHub Copilot, an AI assistant that offers coders suggestions and prompts, found that those using the tool completed a task on average 55.8% faster. Another study found that workers using ChatGPT for tasks including press releases or analysis plans completed them 10 minutes faster and also saw quality rise. And another found that customer support agents using AI assistants completed 14% more tasks per hour.