Yahoo Finance Live's Dave Briggs and Seana Smith discuss the impact AI technology could have on the workforce.
Video Transcript
- Artificial intelligence will impact just about everything we do moving forward. Researchers from OpenAI open research in the University of Pennsylvania, in fact, believe that up to 80% of workers could see their work tasks affected by large language models. The paper argues that mathematicians, accountants, and journalists are some of the jobs that could be impacted. The research also finding that higher income jobs may face more exposure to AI, Seana.
- Yeah. And I think this is interesting because they're not saying that 80% of jobs are going to be displaced or totally eliminated because of AI. But you're going to have some portion of your work affected by AI technology. And I think the initial response is a lot of people will be very nervous about that headline, very worried about whether or not their job is going to be one of those that could potentially be eliminated. What they're saying, at least 10% of your work is going to be effective for those 80% that will have their job at least impacted in some way by AI. So 10%. You're still pretty needed in the rest of the 90% of whatever you're doing.
- And just to clarify some of these numbers, they add 19% of the population will have 50% of their work impacted. So that 80% only has the margins of what they do, probably the busy work, impacted. The question is, will you get paid less in the future because, technically, you might be doing less? I don't know. We have no idea where AI is going. It is evolving so much faster than any of us can perceive and analysts and investors can perceive. Just a guess, yeah, I think people will in some professions listed here make a little bit less. But then again, your job will be more efficient. You'll have more time for it might be spending time with your family or finding a side hustle.
- Yeah. I was going to say or you're just going to simply be much more productive at your job, so you will then be responsible for more. So I think it will be a win-win here for companies just in terms of investing in AI, implementing those technologies within their business, and then getting more out of every employee. So, hopefully, that doesn't mean pay will be cut. Although, I'm sure maybe that excuse might be used for some companies here--
- Good question.
- --as they are looking to cut some costs. [INAUDIBLE] AI, really, what comes down to it is there's so much uncertainty, like you're saying, so much unknown, and that's really what is scaring people. And when you given the fact that there is so much unknown out there, you don't know what you can trust, what you can't trust. Given the fact that when you talk about ChatGPT, there's a lot of misinformation in some of the facts, some of the information that it does spit out. And I think, right now, we need to get a better handle on that before we see more widespread adoption. I don't know how realistic that is though.
- And recently, misperception, there's no sarcasm. And it can't take sarcasm into account, which has really fooled a lot of people. Can we answer how many jobs will be completely replaced by AI? No. But undoubtedly, some significant number of our economy. There are jobs that you need to ask yourself if you're in college or just out of college what jobs could potentially be completely replaced by AI because there will be those. So you need to think about that as you're planning your future now. That's frightening. But that's the reality. It's here. And it's only going to be moving faster and faster every day.
- And we've talked to expert after expert. And most of them are saying that it's going to impact every single industry--
- Everything.
- --which is crazy.
