Artificial intelligence is the latest technology in an ongoing series of innovations that threaten to destroy some jobs and transform others. The International Monetary Fund warned at the beginning of the year that AI would affect 40% of jobs and worsen social inequality. The director of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, urged countries to develop a safety net to mitigate the impact on workers. At the same time, the World Economic Forum estimated that this technology will destroy 85 million jobs by 2050, but will create a few more, a total of 97 million. Beyond the traditional narratives when we talk about the intersection between machines and humans, artificial intelligence has already impacted the labor market with new jobs as data director, data architect, data translator or responsible for user experience.

“First of all, there are a number of professionals who break in from obtaining the data, which is the raw material of any algorithm both offline and online. Secondly, there are professionals who help manage them, and finally, others who help exploit them”, explains Oleguer Sagarra, co-founder of Dribia, a company born in 2016 dedicated to designing algorithms to optimize business processes . In fact, all 40 Dribia jobs are the result of AI.

“For more than forty years we have been talking about this technology on a theoretical level and for more than twenty years we have been using it”, adds Sagarra. “If AI is part of the core of the business, the company hires those profiles directly, but when this does not happen the most common is to outsource the service. The data translator is a booming figure, because it is usually an employee with a long career in a certain sector who acquires a training in data to interact with the data department”, he adds.

Generative AI, which includes tools such as ChatGPT, DALL-E or Stable Diffusion, among many others, capable of generating new content from the commands of a human without technical knowledge, is beginning to have an undeniable impact in the field labor In almost any industry, these tools complement human work, rather than replacing it: they help write emails or reports, make job presentations, program web pages, develop algorithms, or do calculations.

Beyond this complementarity, companies are in a research phase before the incorporation of generative in production processes. “The demos we’ve seen since the emergence of Chat GPT are one thing and what’s established is another very different thing,” explains Sagarra. “Generative AI is so new that the only job that has appeared since the GPT Chat burst is that of prompt generators, that is, people dedicated to giving precise directions to one of these tools to obtain certain results”, he says. And he warns that “the danger it entails for companies is too high, because it is about putting themselves in the hands of an external algorithm”.

While it is too early to count the new jobs and those at risk, it seems clear that one of the sectors most affected by generative AI is the cultural industries. “AI will not take your job, but it can be taken by someone who masters this technology”, says the creative director and professor of Communication at Ramon Llull University, Marc Mallafré, generator of advertising prompts.

“Before the emergence of generative, in order to move forward with a project, you needed other professional profiles, such as an illustrator to make storyboards, a 3D artist or a photo retoucher. Now I can do it all myself. Therefore, in my sector, there are many profiles affected by AI, while others come out strengthened”, he adds.

Mallafré has specialized in generating images with AI for the automotive sector, which he spreads through Instagram: “It is what has helped me win jobs, not only in automotive, but in other industries”. He has been published in several magazines in Japan and Italy, he has been bought an image for the cover of an album and an American advertising agency has asked him to make images for car brands.

Regarding the skills needed to dialogue with generative AI programs in the cultural industry, Mallafré emphasizes, beyond technical capabilities, having imagination, cultivating good cultural references and knowing how to write as accurately as possible to interact with the machine “Writing is a booming skill,” he says, “the more precise you are, the better.”