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News on June 3, as chatbots such as ChatGPT are increasingly widely used in various industries, many professions are facing the risk of being replaced. Especially those involved in curated marketing and social media content creation. Some companies have found that even a slight decrease in copywriting quality is worth the cost reduction. These displaced white-collar workers have to turn to odd jobs such as walking dogs and repairing air conditioners to make ends meet.
When the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT launched in November 2022, 25-year-old copywriter Olivia Lipkin did not Too concerned. However, in the internal chat group at her tech startup, articles started circulating about how to use the tool at work. At the time, Lipkin was the company's only writer.
Over the next few months, Lipkin’s work assignments became increasingly limited. Managers started calling her "Olivia-ChatGPT" in group chats. In April, Lipkin was fired without explanation. But she found the reason in the article her manager posted: It was cheaper to use ChatGPT than to pay a writer.
"Whenever people mention ChatGPT, I feel uneasy and anxious, afraid that it will replace me," Lipkin said. "Now, I have solid evidence that my worries are not unfounded. I lost my job because artificial intelligence replaced me."
Many economists predict that artificial intelligence technology like ChatGPT may replace many jobs, causing a large-scale industrial revolution-like “Workforce restructuring.”
Tools such as chatbots are already beginning to replace the jobs of some workers, especially those engaged in curated marketing and social media content creation, and these tools appear to be creating some reasonable alternatives.
Experts say even the most advanced artificial intelligence technologies cannot match human writing skills because they lack a personalized style and often give wrong, ridiculous or biased answers. However, for many companies, the cost savings are worth the slight loss in copywriting quality.
“We are in a crisis right now,” said Sarah T. Roberts, associate professor of digital workforce at UCLA. “Artificial intelligence is replacing many jobs that should be immune to automation. ”
Artificial intelligence has rapidly improved in quality over the past year, resulting in chatbots that can converse fluently, write songs and even write computer code. To promote the technology, many Silicon Valley companies are making these products available to more users for free.
Artificial intelligence and algorithms have been an integral part of the workplace for decades. Consumer goods companies, grocery stores and warehouse logistics companies have been using predictive algorithms and AI-driven vision systems to help them make business decisions, automate certain mechanical tasks and manage inventory. For much of the 20th century, robots dominated factories and many office tasks were replaced by software.
But the recent rise of generative artificial intelligence may set off a disruptive new wave. It uses complex algorithms trained on billions of words and images from the internet and can generate text, images and audio. Experts say the technology's ability to churn out answers that look like they were written by real people makes high-paid knowledge workers targets for replacement.
Ethan Mollick, associate professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, said: “In every previous automation threat, automation has mostly automated hard, dirty, repetitive work. This time, the threat of automation is directly targeting the highest-paid and most creative jobs. These jobs often require talents with more education."
In March this year, the US investment bank Goldman Sachs predicted that 18% of the world's Jobs may be automated by artificial intelligence, and white-collar workers such as lawyers will be more at risk than workers in industries such as construction or maintenance. The report also stated: "For those occupations that are mainly engaged in outdoor work or manual labor, artificial intelligence cannot yet fully automate."
The U.S. government has also sounded the alarm. The White House released a A report said: "Artificial intelligence has the potential to automate 'non-routine' tasks, thereby exposing large new workforces to potentialjob lossthreats."
But Molick said it was too early to assess the threat of artificial intelligence to the workforce. Jobs such as copywriting, translation and transcription, and paralegals are particularly at risk, he noted. Because these work tasks can easily be handed over to chatbots. Advanced legal analysis, creative writing, or art making, for example, may not be so easily replaced because humans still outperform AI in these areas.
Molik also said: "We can think of artificial intelligence as a senior intern. Some jobs are mainly for new people to get started in a certain industry and do something useful. It also leads to the next level. Springboard. Now, those jobs are being threatened by artificial intelligence."
Eric Fein, from Bloomingdale, Illinois, has been running his own content writing business for 10 years. His work ranges from 150-word bath mat descriptions to special website copy, and charges $60 an hour. He has built a stable business with 10 contracts to fulfill, which accounts for half of his annual income and provides a comfortable life for his wife and children.
However, in March of this year, Fein received a notice from his largest customer: due to the adoption of ChatGPT, his services would no longer be needed. Nine of Fein's other contracts were canceled for the same reason, and the entire copywriting business disappeared almost overnight.
"It makes me feel exhausted," Fein said. He asked these customers to reconsider the decision and warned that ChatGPT may not be able to provide the same creativity, technical precision and original content as he does. Fein said customers understand this, but they tell him that using ChatGPT costs him significantly less than what they pay him.
Happily, Fein was subsequently rehired by one of his clients, who was dissatisfied with ChatGPT’s work. However, this was not enough to support Finn and his family, who only had enough savings to last more than six months.
Now that Fein has decided to take on a job that artificial intelligence can’t do, he has signed up for a training course as an HVAC technician. Next year, he plans to train to become a plumber. He said: "This kind of training can help prevent problems before they happen!"
Many companies have tried to replace employees with chatbots, but have failed miserably. For example, the technology news website CNET used artificial intelligence to write articles, but the results were full of errors, and editors spent more time correcting them. A lawyer used ChatGPT to write a legal brief, but cited many fictitious cases.
The National Eating Disorders Association has reportedly laid off helpline staff and replaced them with chatbots. But the advice provided by chatbots is unsympathetic and even harmful, so they have paused their use of the technology.
UCLA Professor Roberts said chatbots can cause costly mistakes and that companies rushing to introduce ChatGPT into their operations are "going too far." Because the chatbot works by predicting the most likely words in a sentence, it produces mediocre content. This presents the company with a difficult choice: Should we ensure quality or save costs?
"We have to ask ourselves: Are chatbots good enough? Is imitation enough? Is that all we care about?" Roberts said. "We're going to lower quality standards, and for what purpose? To give company owners and shareholders a bigger piece of the pie?"
After discovering that he was replaced by ChatGPT, advertising copywriter Lipkin is reconsidering whether Keep working in an office job. She originally got into content marketing as a way to make ends meet while pursuing creative writing. But she found the job draining her and making it difficult to write as she wanted. Now, she starts walking people's dogs.
Lipkin said: "I'm going to take a complete break from the workplace. People are looking for the cheapest solution, but it's not a real person, it's a robot."
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