ChatGPT: The AI that might take jobs away

OpenAI's latest invention is being seen as a threat to jobs all over.

By Samwel Rasheed Tan
February 14, 2023

OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT (Image credit: OpenAI)

Artificial intelligence has come a long way in its continued rapid development through the decades. From recognizing colors to solving puzzles, and to navigating phones—AI has slowly become more and more integrated in our lives as time passes. 

This integration and rapid evolution have been the cause of the stir recently as it slowly gets closer to human replicability or worse, threatens to replace aspects of our livelihood. 

Reports like the one from the latest MLIV Pulse Survey only show a pile of these fears as it says that advanced artificial intelligence systems pose a looming threat to white-collar jobs all over the world. 

The latest of these so-called threats is ChatGPT, and it's already causing a massive stir. 

What is ChatGPT?

Made by OpenAI – one of the leading AI research laboratories in the world, ChatGPT is a dialogue-based AI chatbot capable of comprehending and producing detailed texts akin to a normal functioning person.

It is part of the latest iteration of text-generating AIs coined Generative Pre-Trained Transformer – or GPT, hence the name. ChatGPT specifically is fine-tuned from the GPT-3.5 series, able to predict future outcomes of sequences from past-observed outcomes of the same sequence or prompt. OpenAI pairs its model with reinforcement learning creating an advanced AI capable of following instructions and giving comprehensive responses in a text-based medium. 

What can ChatGPT do?

With reinforcement learning and having the web as its training field, ChatGPT can do an assortment of text-outcome-related tasks. It generates detailed responses to a vast range of questions and prompts– allowing for a multitude of applications either for day-to-day or professional tasks. 

One of its most common applications is the ability to hold coherent conversations with any functioning human being able to also generate text to it. These conversations can go in length and have a myriad of topics because of the nature of ChatGPT's model and learning. Almost like the movie Her with Joaquin Phoenix. 

Aside from this, the AI can generate texts tailormade to a desired written prompt, genre, topic, and/or length. It can create both creative and non-creative texts, essays, articles, etc. – all in just a couple of minutes with a couple of commands. These generated texts can be translated into multiple languages at different levels of proficiency. 

Outside the obvious, ChatGPT can also summarize, generate and analyze data and codes. Processing textual data in a couple of seconds and providing a lengthy analysis. All in all these functions have their applications in professional industries, providing an ultimate tool for productivity in just a few minutes. 

Can ChatGPT actually take jobs away?

Upon its release, ChatGPT immediately piqued the interests of business owners, academics, and journalists alike because of its capabilities. 

The AI chatbot has achieved full marks on exam queries from universities, passed multiple interview phases from Google that would result in a standard programming position, and garnered the checkbooks of tech companies all over to invest in it. This has led to the fear and stir that it would replace actual human beings sooner or later. But can it actually do it?

Its ability to write and generate coherent sentences and articles on a wide array of topics, style, and length technically could fill in for a job such as journalism and content writing. In addition, the ability to hold human-like conversations could be used in telecommunication professions such as customer care services. Finally, being able to code in a number of languages pose a threat to coders and programmers alike.

However, despite being as close to human capabilities as ever, the human factors that it lacks are still apparent enough that it will still not be capable of replacing actual human professional production anytime soon. The AI still lacks critical thinking, risk assessment, and ethical decision-making which makes most if not all professions work. 

These factors seem like it would not stop tech companies, who are no stranger to massive layoffs like Microsoft from investing billions in the software. Still, you can rest easy knowing that the AI chatbot cannot take jobs away as of its most current iteration. 

What ChatGPT is at the moment is a powerful tool that can boost aspects of your profession, not snatch them from you. A free assistant at your disposal is capable of doing all sorts of text-related things to be used to boost your productivity. 

You can try ChatGPT for yourself here, for free.