By Adam Pease
Generative AI and the Labor Market: Is It Causing Job Loss?
New reports are emerging from a variety of different organizations that suggest generative AI might be impacting the labor market already, leading to new layoffs. This blog discusses the news and what AI means for the labor market.
Is Generative AI Causing Job Loss?
For the first time, new labor reports are citing artificial intelligence as a reason for job losses for American workers. This comes on the heels of generative AI’s rise and the growing popularity of OpenAI’s ChatGPT as a productivity tool.
Early reports suggest that marketing departments are being hit the hardest as business leaders look to old processes, like the generation of social media copy, and leverage tools like large language models to greatly speed up these workflows.
AI and the Future of Work
Aragon does expect that the rise of generative AI will cause friction in the labor market, but while some jobs may be lost, other new ones will likely emerge. Additionally, knowledge workers in organizations that take advantage of AI effectively will be more empowered to focus on the parts of their jobs that leverage their unique creative and organizational skills, rather than more redundant work processes that are easier to automate.
The overall financial benefits of generative AI could also provide a major boon to the overall economy, creating a financial windfall that could create new job. While it does have major transformative potential for organizations, it’s important to remember that this emerging technology is not a full replacement for human work; effective deployments require humans in the loop to fully take advantage of AI capabilities.
And at the same time, workers and market analysts should be aware that the rise of AI might provide a convenient excuse for layoffs that might have happened anyway given a rocky economic climate.
Bottom Line
Generative AI is sure to continue to shake up the labor market, but whether this means there will be growing job loss or a new set of occupations geared towards working with generative AI remains to be seen. Aragon Research expects that this disruptive technology will continue to transform the way work gets done into the foreseeable future.
Don’t Forget to Sign Up for our next #TransformTour23:
AI Everywhere — Going ChatGPT on June 15th | 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET
Transform Tour 2023: AI Everywhere—Going ChatGPT
Since the launch of OpenAI’s GPT service, organizations have been scrambling to put out their own copilot service. In our June Transform Tour, taking place on Thursday, June 15, 2023, we will discuss how Copilots work and how you can define a strategy to support digital labor.
