According to a report in the Financial Times, Goldman Sachs has found that "generative" AI systems such as ChatGPT could lead to the automation of a quarter of the work done in the US and eurozone. This could eventually raise the annual global gross domestic product by 7% over a 10-year period. However, it would also bring "significant disruption" to the labor market, exposing the equivalent of 300 million full-time workers across big economies to automation. Lawyers and administrative staff would be among those at greatest risk of becoming redundant.
They calculate that roughly two-thirds of jobs in the US and Europe are exposed to some degree of AI automation, based on data on the tasks typically performed in thousands of occupations.
"...it would bring 'significant disruption' to the labor market, exposing the equivalent of 300 million full-time workers across big economies to automation."
Most people would see less than half of their workload automated and would probably continue in their jobs, with some of their time freed up for more productive activities.
Goldman said its research pointed to a similar impact in Europe. At a global level, since manual jobs are a bigger share of employment in the developing world, it estimates about a fifth of work could be done by AI — or about 300mn full-time jobs across big economies.
The report will stoke the debate over the potential of AI technologies both to revive the rich world’s flagging productivity growth and to create a new class of dispossessed white-collar workers, who risk suffering a similar fate to that of manufacturing workers in the 1980s.
Goldman’s estimates of the impact are more conservative than those of some academic studies, which included the effects of a wider range of related technologies.
Europol, the law enforcement agency, also warned this week that rapid advances in generative AI could aid online fraudsters and cyber criminals, so that “dark LLMs . . . may become a key criminal business model of the future”.
The Goldman estimates are based on an analysis of US and European data on the tasks typically performed in thousands of different occupations. The researchers assumed that AI would be capable of tasks such as completing tax returns for a small business; evaluating a complex insurance claim; or documenting the results of a crime scene investigation.
They did not envisage AI being adopted for more sensitive tasks such as making a court ruling, checking the status of a patient in critical care or studying international tax laws.
Source: Financial Times
