Generative AI will disrupt white collar workers in US and Europe, report warns
A Goldman Sachs report estimates that automation could replace around one-fifth of all current jobs around the world
A new report by the bank Goldman Sachs has warned that generative AI technology, such as ChatGPT, has the potential to cause significant disruption to employment across the world, with around 300 million full-time jobs in the US and Europe at risk of being affected by automation.
The study also highlights that generative AI could boost the economy and increase global gross domestic product by 7% in a decade.
Since its release in November last year, OpenAI's ChatGPT has rapidly gained popularity and become one of the world's fastest-growing applications, known for its human-like interactions and engaging conversations. It can perform tasks such as answering questions, writing essays, summarising documents and writing software.
The popularity of ChatGPT has spurred other tech companies to develop their own instruction-following models.
Google announced last month its AI chatbot technology, Bard, which aims to provide fresh, high-quality responses to users' queries by leveraging web data. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has also entered the race with its partially open-source model called LLaMA.
The advent of generative AI tools like ChatGPT has created excitement, but it has also raised concerns about the potential obsolescence of white-collar jobs, similar to the impact of factory robots on manufacturing jobs in the 1980s.
According to a Goldman Sachs report, breakthroughs in AI could automate up to a quarter of jobs, particularly those of lawyers and administrative staff.
Authors Joseph Briggs and Devesh Kodnani calculate that 7% of US and European workers could effectively be replaced by generative AI, with vulnerability to other forms of automation taking that figure to around a quarter of all jobs.
Based on data on the tasks performed in thousands of occupations, authors Joseph Briggs and Devesh Kodnani calculate that approximately two-thirds of jobs in the US and Europe will be impacted, to some degree, to AI automation.
However, the majority of employees are likely to see only a fraction of their duties automated, which could enable them to concentrate on more efficient tasks. The report find that this will be a likely scenario for 63% of the workforce in the US.
Workers in physical or outdoor jobs will likely not be impacted to the same extent by generative AI, although their work could still be vulnerable to other types of automation.
Globally, the report's authors estimate that automation could replace around on-fifth of all current jobs.
The findings of the Goldman Sachs report are more cautious than those of other studies, which took into account the impact of a broader range of related technologies.
According to a recent paper by OpenAI, up to 80% of the US workforce could have at least 10% of their tasks automated by generative AI, and approximately 19% of workers could see up to 50% of their tasks impacted.
Generative AI's impact could affect all wage levels, with higher-paying jobs potentially facing more significant exposure. Its effects would not be restricted to industries that have experienced higher productivity growth in recent years.
AI for crime
There is also growing concern that AI will be effective as a tool for criminal activities.
Europol, the EU's law enforcement agency, issued a warning last week that the rapid advancements in generative AI could assist online fraudsters and become a "crucial criminal business model" in the future.
Examples cited by Europol included the use of AI to create convincing "deep fakes" that can be used to spread disinformation, as well as chatbots designed to trick people into revealing their personal information through phishing scams.