Artificial Intelligence
Is AI about to steal Aussie white collar jobs? Experts reveal the complex tasks ChatGPT can master and the six-figure salary professions under threat
- New artificial intelligence technology can summarise text
- OpenAI’s new ChatGPT can write essays and reports
- Experts say many white collar jobs could be done by AI
New-generation artificial intelligence has the potential to replace white-collar workers from highly paid doctors and management consultants to home tutors, experts say.
The latest ChatGPT technology is more sophisticated than previous generations of AI, being able to read through thousands of pages of text and produce the kind of interesting and colourful summary a human would.
University students could potentially use it to write an essay rather than putting the effort into doing the research themselves.
This new technology can provide answers to complex questions, take instruction via voice commands and write a report in the style of a particular human.
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New-generation artificial intelligence has the potential to replace middle class white collar jobs from doctors and management consultants on six-figure salaries to home tutors, experts say (pictured is a stock image of robot)
It has the potential to upend jobs where humans earn a living writing reports, from six-figure salary consultants hired by public service departments and large corporations to suburban general practitioners and home tutors who teach children.
Basic journalism is also under threat, with AI able to compile sports reports and condense stock market movements into a readable summary.
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, was co-founded by Tesla entrepreneur Elon Musk and has financial backing from Microsoft.
Microsoft’s billionaire co-founder Bill Gates, who is visiting Australia, said artificial intelligence had the potential to replace white collar jobs, including in teaching and medicine.
‘AI is going to help us with teaching kids,’ he told ABC 7.30 host Sarah Ferguson.
‘It’s going to help us with access to healthcare workers, making healthcare more efficient.
‘AI is going to affect not just blue collar jobs but also white collar jobs.’
Mr Gates said AI may even potentially do some of the work of doctors.
The latest ChatGPT technology is more sophisticated than previous generations of AI, being able to read through thousands of pages of text and produce the kind of interesting and colourful summary a human would
‘It will be able to tutor kids and give medical advice but it won’t match humans, not in the fullest sense of human personality,’ he said.
General practitioners in 2019-20 had an average taxable salary of $175,731, and are in short supply, particularly in regional areas, with Australia reliant on immigration for skilled professionals.
Artificial intelligence could potentially be used to fill skills shortages, with Australia’s unemployment rate in December remaining at a 48-year low of 3.5 per cent.
But Emeritus Professor Roy Green, a special innovation adviser at the University of Technology Sydney, said there was a danger AI could be misused as jobs were replaced.
‘That puts a big emphasis on how we retrain our workforce and how we adapt to those new technologies so that we become the masters of the technology, not the servants,’ he told Daily Mail Australia.
‘We will see new jobs emerge but they will be very different from anything we’ve seen in the past, in association with other jobs disappearing.’
Daniel Angus, a professor of digital communication at the Queensland University of Technology, said ChatGPT could save taxpayers money by doing the work of expensive private sector consultants.
Jobs website SEEK putting the average salary of such external consultants at $125,000.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who is visiting Australia, said artificial intelligence had the potential to replace white collar jobs, including teaching and medicine
‘Again, bulls*** jobs, jobs where they’re basically paid to go in, gather a whole bunch of existing text from online, from public sources, and distil it down into a digestible executive summary or report, that is prime for being outsourced to one of these approaches,’ he told Daily Mail Australia.
‘That’s the kind of thing that these technologies certainly will have a role in in the future.’
Professor Angus said AI could also do the work of journalists writing routine reports.
‘If you want to write a sports report in the kind of way that sports reporting is… a bit, say, more whimsical – it has a few more kind of woody anecdotes peppered in it – the GPT approach might be able to do that with more sophistication than prior models,’ he said.
Existing AI technology can already compile sports scores and summarise stock market movements for a business reporter.
ChatGPT would be able to go a step further and write political stories, which are often based on media releases from ministers and members of parliament.
‘A lot of what is passed off as journalism is actually just passing off facts – that’s not something that you necessarily require a huge amount of analytical insight,’ Professor Angus said.
Mr Gates said AI could even potentially be able to do the job of doctors, without replacing humans (pictured is a stock image of a general practitioner)
Professor Angus said ChatGPT technology was more likely to complement existing jobs, rather than completely replace them, likening the technology to the modern calculator adding up numbers.
‘There’s been a whipped-up moral panic around it, and it’s got everyone talking,’ he said.
‘New jobs might be able to be created from this as well.
‘With the moral panic that comes around any new technology, people are worried about “this job will be outsourced” or “this job won’t exist” – I often come back to this idea, bull**** jobs (will be lost) – the jobs that actually shouldn’t exist.’
Despite the potential of new AI, the likes of retired judges would still be required to conduct legal enquiries.
‘The person who is the author has insight from lived experience – 30 years as a judge within the court system and leveraging that expertise, there is a difference there,’ Professor Angus said.
Journalists would also still be needed to interview witnesses at a crime scene.
‘It can’t locate an informant or actually go to the site of a particular incident and start to ask questions,’ Professor Angus said.
