ChatGPT, the revolutionary AI software taking the internet by storm, could soon put millions out of work by making white collar jobs obsolete, experts have warned.
The system has such promising capabilities that Microsoft recently announced a new ‘multi-year, multi-billion-dollar investment’ to grow the tech.
The firm’s backing of the artificial intelligence bot comes as it lays off 10,000 employees and experts warn AI is making well-paid workers increasingly vulnerable.
Microsoft announced a ‘multi-year, multi-billion-dollar investment’ in ChatGPT as it moves to sack nearly five percent of its global workforce this month as ‘tech wreck’ sweeps Silicon Valley. Pictured: CEO Satya Nadella
‘AI is replacing the white-collar workers’, said Pengcheng Shi, an associate dean in the Department of Computing and Information Sciences at Rochester Institute of Technology.
‘I don’t think anyone can stop that. This is not crying wolf,’ Shi told The New York Post. ‘The wolf is at the door.’
Since it was released for free to the public in November by company OpenAI, the chatbot caused a stir online and amassed close to a million users in its first week.
The system is trained on a huge data set and is designed to continually improve itself, allowing it to generate answers to nearly any question.
Through a simple text prompt, the tech has the ability to work through almost any problem it is faced with, with varying accuracy depending on its task.
The tool passed several law school exams when University of Minnesota professors put it to the test, where it averaged a passing C+ grade on the student papers.
In the law exam essay questions, the bot was able to accurately recite legal rules and correctly describe cases.
ChatGPT also recently scored higher than many humans on an MBA exam at Penn’s elite Wharton School, where it received a respectable B- grade.
The professor who administered the test said the chatbot was able to do ‘professional tasks’ such as ‘writing software code and preparing legal documents.’
The tool’s capabilities have led experts to warn the continually improving system could spell doom for numerous industries.
Among the job fields that could soon become dominated by the artificial intelligence includes finance, graphic design and education.
One industry that is in particular danger is tech and software design, a field that has already been rocked in recent times as Silicon Valley has undergone massive staff layoffs.
Pengcheng Shi, an associate dean in the Department of Computing and Information Sciences at Rochester Institute of Technology, warned that the AI could cost white collar jobs
The ChatGPT system is trained on a huge data set and is designed to continually improve itself, allowing it to generate answers to nearly any question
Microsoft sacked nearly five percent of its workforce as 10,000 employees were left out of work this month at the same time the firm committed billions into the future of ChatGPT.
‘We are announcing the third phase of our long-term partnership with OpenAI through a multiyear, multibillion dollar investment to accelerate AI breakthroughs to ensure these benefits are broadly shared with the world,’ the company said in a statement.
The new wave of funding comes after Microsoft already plowed a billion dollars into Open AI in 2019.
Gil Luria, a technology strategist at finance firm D.A. Davidson, said the moved showed the company was banking on AI to drive growth.
‘It tells you a lot that within a week of announcing pretty substantial layoffs, Microsoft is also announcing a substantial investment in OpenAI,’ Luria told Yahoo Finance.
‘It tells you that that’s where they think a lot of the future growth for Microsoft can come from, and that the technology that OpenAI is developing can drive meaningful improvements to a broad set of products for them.’
Silicon Valley has seen huge staff layoffs in recent months, with Microsoft just one of several tech companies who have made major workforce cuts
Microsoft initiated the layoffs earlier this month after citing a negative economic outlook and slowing customer demand.
‘We’re also seeing organizations in every industry and geography exercise caution as some parts of the world are in a recession and other parts are anticipating one,’ CEO Satya Nadella said in a company memo.
The firm had previously recorded huge growth during the Covid-19 pandemic, when workers and businesses turned to its products amid the work-from-home boom.
But its recent layoffs come after Microsoft already announced in July 2022 that it was sacking 1 percent of its workforce and significantly slowing staff hiring.
The company’s revenue fell by a shocking 12 percent in a year, as it recorded only $51.9 billion in revenue during the second quarter of last year while expecting to rake in $52.4 billion.
The cost-cutting measures have taken over a slew of tech companies in recent months, including Amazon, Apple and Meta.
In November, the Facebook-parent company announced it would cut 13 percent of its workforce – over 11,000 employees – as it faced mounting costs and a weak advertising market.
Meta, once worth more than $1 trillion, is now valued at $256 billion after losing more than 70 percent of its value last year alone.
‘Not only has online commerce returned to prior trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than I’d expected,’ Zuckerberg said in a message to employees, according to Reuters.
‘I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that.’
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