Few of us can fail to be impressed by the latest artificial intelligence (AI) systems, such as ChatGPT, which have been rolled out for public use since the latter part of 2022. Through interactive chat on our smartphones or computers, we can pose questions to ChatGPT or ask for responses to whole pages of text and then get back hundreds of words of meaningful text in reply. Drawing on billions of pieces of information from the web on which it has been trained, ChatGPT uses sophisticated deep learning neural networks that are intended to simulate the way our brains process language and then answer our questions. The responses it gives are mostly highly accurate and written to a high standard. It can write essays and reports, and even be creative and produce poetry, for example. It can come up with entirely original ideas or new ways of looking at problems by making connections between information that is out there on the web in ways that have not been done before. Its capacity for analysing huge quantities of information to answer questions far exceeds that of any human. It could even have written this article, though it didn’t. Occasionally it gets things wrong and even makes things up, and sometimes displays bias because of biased information it may have found on the web. Therefore, we need to be careful to check what it produces.
Known technically as “large language model” AI systems such as ChatGPT represent the pinnacle of current AI technology and represent a new landmark in the history of computer science. The future impact of such large language model AIs on society, and the world of work in particular is likely to be profound. Any job that involves producing reports or documents is likely to be impacted significantly as ChatGPT and similar systems will be able to do much of the work and extremely rapidly. This can include jobs that involve producing business plans, marketing strategies, consultancy reports, audit reports, investment reports, advertising copy, website content, magazine or newspaper articles, and legal briefs to name but a few. There are hardly any areas of business that will not be affected by this. If your job is one that involves lots of document or content production, then potentially your job is at risk as companies begin to see the use of AI as a way of replacing the work done by people like you and to save costs.
Given this likely scenario, what can you do to give yourself the best chance of retaining your job in the long term? The answer is a relatively simple one and that is to fully embrace the new technology and become highly efficient and proficient in using it. The reality is that systems like ChatGPT will not be able to do everything that you do at present. They may be able to do a large part of many jobs, but humans will still be needed to verify what such systems produce and package the AI outputs into the structured documents that may be required for a business purpose. The likely outcome is that not all jobs will disappear, but that teams of staff will get smaller because ChatGPT can enable an individual to speed up what they are doing and become much more productive meaning that fewer people will be needed overall. The people who retain their jobs will almost certainly be those who become the most productive at their tasks through using the AI most effectively.
Therefore, the best way to guarantee long term employment in the new era with such advanced AI is to learn how to work in partnership with the AI. This means several things. Firstly, in order to get systems like ChatGPT to produce useful text or reports they have to be given the right prompts. Becoming expert at framing the input to a large language model AI is the first requirement. This takes practice, experimentation and experience and it may involve breaking a task into many sub-tasks that can be given to the AI. Secondly, given the potential for such AI systems to occasionally produce incorrect or biased information, it is necessary to develop skills in verifying AI outputs and also for checking for any hidden bias or plagiarism using appropriate software tools. Thirdly, it will be good to look for ways to use the AI technology to create new ideas or come up with original solutions to problems. If you can master using AI to innovate or create new business opportunities your employer will undoubtedly value you highly and you might enable new jobs to be created in the process. In conclusion, the essence of job retention in the face of sophisticated AI is not to reject it or fight against it, but to embrace it and become an expert in using it.
By Professor Graeme Wilkinson, Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah Distinguished Professor at Sunway University and is a Fellow of the British Computer Society
