How AI is re-shaping workers' daily lives: BBC

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: BBC worklife
21 May 2023 13:11

Experts agree that there is no need to be concerned about job losses as a result of the emergence of AI, as this transformation may create new opportunities.

Screengrab of ChatGPT's website, the generative website run by OpenAI. (Reuters)

A report published by Bloomberg on Wednesday details some of the many implications Artificial Intelligence (AI) has had on workers' lives.

The report mainly focuses on ChatGPT, a highly powerful chatbot that can answers queries and provide new avenues for increased productivity.

BBC Worklife interviewed experts about the positive attributes of AI in workers' daily lives and its implications in shaping the future workplace.

First, there is the utility of "expanding daily ideas and solutions." As put by Carl Benedikt Frey, future of work director at Oxford University, ChaptGPT can "help you brainstorm and generate new ideas."

For researchers who are interested in promoting their work, "you can ask it to generate a tweet to promote your paper," he says, noting that "there are tremendous possibilities."

This also includes creating an outline for a blog and social media posts that go with it. I can also distill complex topics for a specific audience and plan a business-trip itinerary or forecast a project's cost and timeline.

ChatGPT can also be used to function as a tool to supplement ideas generated by workers. As Ethan Mollick says, an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania, "I generate ideas all the time, and ask AI to do supplements on it."

"I use it to help me process information, to summarize stuff for me, very much as a partner," he added.

A second feature of ChatGPT is "increasing accuracy and correcting biases." This means identifying some issues that people tend to overlook and correcting them or finding new avenues to adjust data.

According to Anna Salomons, a professor at Utrecht University School of Economics, AI can frame data impartially and provide a more thorough analysis.

It can also contribute to the creation of new jobs and careers. Although one of the major concerns for AI has been taking workers' jobs, experts have been reassured there is nothing to worry about, as this shift could generate new job opportunities.

According to Mollick, "Automation disruptions result in a lot of chaos in the short term, and then more jobs in the long term." With the advent of industrialization and automation, he notes, new industries emerged and new jobs were created at unprecedented rates.

Finally, the report states that AI can encourage workers towards AI fluency, so as to not fall behind technology. "What I keep emphasizing to people is to just start using this," says Mollick.

As workers get increasingly fluent, he adds, they can find themselves at a distinct advantage in the job market.

Frey notes that resistance to AI would generate serious obstacles for job seekers. "I think workers that don't work with AI are going to find their skills [become] obsolete quite rapidly. So, therefore, it's imperative to work with AI to stay employed, stay productive, and have up-to-date skills," he says.

In sum, the use and integration of AI into the workplace has a lot to offer but its full potential has yet to be uncovered.

"Ideally we want to use these technologies to create new products, new industries, new lines of work," says Frey. "I think that is the challenge going forward – to actually use AI to generate new and previously inconceivable things."