WAPO – When ChatGPT came out last November, Olivia Lipkin, a 25-year-old copywriter in San Francisco, didn\u2019t think too much about it. Then, articles about how to use the chatbot on the job began appearing on internal Slack groups at the tech start-up where she worked as the company\u2019s only writer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over the next few months, Lipkin\u2019s assignments dwindled. Managers began referring to her as \u201cOlivia\/ChatGPT\u201d on Slack. In April, she was let go without explanation, but when she found managers writing about how using ChatGPT was cheaper than paying a writer, the reason for her layoff seemed clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhenever people brought up ChatGPT, I felt insecure and anxious that it would replace me,\u201d she said. \u201cNow I actually had proof that it was true, that those anxieties were warranted and now I was actually out of a job because of AI.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some economists predict artificial intelligence technology like ChatGPT could replace hundreds of millions of jobs, in a cataclysmic reorganization of the workforce mirroring the industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For some workers, this impact is already here. Those that write marketing and social media content are in the first wave of people being replaced with tools like chatbots, which are seemingly able to produce plausible alternatives to their work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Experts say that even advanced AI doesn\u2019t match the writing skills of a human: It lacks personal voice and style, and it often\u00a0churns out<\/a>\u00a0wrong, nonsensical or biased answers. But for many companies, the cost-cutting is worth a drop in quality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019re really in a crisis point,\u201d said Sarah T. Roberts, an associate professor at University of California in Los Angeles specializing in digital labor. \u201c[AI] is coming for the jobs that were supposed to be automation-proof.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Artificial intelligence has rapidly increased<\/a> in quality over the past year, giving rise to chatbots that can hold fluid conversations, write songs and produce computer code. In a rush to mainstream the technology, Silicon Valley companies are pushing these products to millions of users and \u2014 for now \u2014 often offering them free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n AI and algorithms have been a part of the working world for decades. For years, consumer-product companies, grocery stores and warehouse logistics firms have used predictive algorithms and robots with AI-fueled vision systems to help make business decisions, automate some rote tasks and manage inventory. Industrial plants and factories have been dominated by robots for much of the 20th century, and countless office tasks have been replaced by software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the recent wave of\u00a0generative artificial intelligence<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 which uses complex algorithms trained on billions of words and images from the open internet to produce text, images and audio \u2014 has the potential for a new stage of disruption. The technology\u2019s ability to churn out human-sounding prose puts highly paid knowledge workers in the crosshairs for replacement, experts said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn every previous automation threat, the automation was about automating the hard, dirty, repetitive jobs,\u201d said Ethan Mollick, an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Wharton School of Business. \u201cThis time, the automation threat is aimed squarely at the highest-earning, most creative jobs that \u2026 require the most educational background.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In March, Goldman Sachs\u00a0predicted<\/a>\u00a0that 18 percent of work worldwide could be automated by AI, with white-collar workers such as lawyers at more risk than those in trades such as construction or maintenance. \u201cOccupations for which a significant share of workers\u2019 time is spent outdoors or performing physical labor cannot be automated by AI,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The White House also sounded the alarm, saying in a December\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cAI has the potential to automate \u2018nonroutine\u2019 tasks, exposing large new swaths of the workforce to potential disruption.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Mollick said it\u2019s too early to gauge how disruptive<\/a> AI will be to the workforce. He noted that jobs such as copywriting, document translation and transcription, and paralegal work are particularly at risk, since they have tasks that are easily done by chatbots. High-level legal analysis, creative writing or art may not be as easily replaceable, he said, because humans still outperform AI in those areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThink of AI as generally acting as a high-end intern,\u201d he said. \u201cJobs that are mostly designed as entry-level jobs to break you into a field where you do something kind of useful, but it\u2019s also sort of a steppingstone to the next level \u2014 those are thekinds of jobs under threat.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eric Fein ran his content-writing business for 10 years, charging $60 an hour to write everything from 150-word descriptions of bath mats to website copy for cannabis companies. The 34-year-old from Bloomingdale, Ill., built a steady business with 10 ongoing contracts, which made up half of his annual income and provided a comfortable life for his wife and 2-year-old son.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But in March, Fein received a note from his largest client: His services would no longer be needed because the company would be transitioning to ChatGPT. One by one, Fein\u2019s nine other contracts were canceled for the same reason. His entire copywriting business was gone nearly overnight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt wiped me out,\u201d Fein said. He urged his clients to reconsider, warning that ChatGPT couldn\u2019t write content with his level of creativity, technical precision and originality. He said his clients understood that, but they told him it was far cheaper to use ChatGPT than to pay him his hourly wage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fein was rehired by one of his clients, who wasn\u2019t pleased with ChatGPT\u2019s work. But it isn\u2019t enough to sustain him and his family, who have a little over six months of financial runway before they run out of money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, Fein has decided to pursue a job that AI can\u2019t do, and he has enrolled in courses to become an HVAC technician. Next year, he plans to train to become a plumber.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA trade is more future-proof,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Companies that replaced workers with chatbots have faced high-profile stumbles. When the technology news site CNET used artificial intelligence<\/a> to write articles, the results were riddled with errors and resulted in lengthy corrections. A lawyer who relied on ChatGPT for a legal brief cited numerous fictitious <\/a>cases. And the National Eating Disorders Association, which laid off people staffing its helpline and reportedly replaced them with a chatbot, suspended its use<\/a> of the technology after it doled out insensitive and harmful advice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n