“Is it necessary to automate all jobs? Do we have to develop non-human minds that outnumber and outsmart us and eventually replace us? Do we have to risk losing control of our civilization?â€
In an almost apocalyptic tone, more than 1,800 academics and businessmen have raised a cry in the sky this week alarmed by the unstoppable advances in generative Artificial Intelligence, a technology that has popularized the ChatGPT platform, exploited by the American company OpenAI. In just three months, it has amassed 100 million users worldwide and has accelerated the technological race for automated natural language. The letter is signed by Elon Musk, the controversial founder of Tesla and owner of Twitter, but also bears the signature of Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, and hundreds of businessmen and academics from prestigious universities.
As the graph shows, the advances of this technology are getting faster and there is a feeling in the market that this technology can escape the control of humans. We are facing a paradigm shift, in the opinion of magnate Bill Gates. “In my life I have seen two demonstrations of revolutionary technologies. The first was in 1980, when I was introduced to the graphical interface from which Windows has been built. The second big surprise came last year, when I saw the progress of OpenAI. The algorithm answered questions for which it was not specifically trained and its margin of error was limitedâ€, the founder of Microsoft recently published on his website, a company that has announced an investment of 10,000 million precisely in this platform.
The potential of ChatGPT and its counterparts—there are thousands of platforms like it, including Anthropic, into which Google has invested $300 million—seems enormous. A study published earlier this week by Goldman Sachs ensures that if this technology becomes sophisticated at the levels it promises, it could eliminate a quarter of jobs in the United States and the euro area. Globally, one fifth of the workforce could be compromised. According to the study, prepared by economists Joseph Briggs and Devesh Kodnani, that would be equivalent to about 300 million jobs in large economies. The most exposed would be administrative staff, lawyers, architects, scientists, salespeople, computer scientists… As the graph shows, practically no profession is spared. Except, of course, for purely physical jobs, such as construction, cleaning or maintenance (although they could be automated by other types of technologies).
Education is a separate case. It is one of the sectors that is highly susceptible to being automated, as has already been verified in schools and universities, which have prohibited the use of this technology in order to avoid plagiarism among students. Among them are Oxford, Cambridge and Sciences Po. Esteve Almirall, a professor at Esade specializing in open innovation, doubts that this technology has a long way to go in the education sector. “Artificial intelligence will be stopped by the educational legislation of each country. It seems difficult for this technology to make the figure of the primary and secondary teacher disappear, at least in Spain â€, he maintains.
That of Goldman Sachs is not the only study that alerts about the disappearance of jobs due to the impact of generative AI. According to an OpenAI report, two out of ten workers in the United States could automate 50% of their work, while eight out of ten could leave 10% of their activity to the robot.
With these data on the table, the old fear of the replacement of humans by machines returns, an idea that economists try to qualify. “In the short term, the effects of AI could negatively affect the labor market, but in the long term it has been proven that new technologies have positive effects, because they have created jobs that did not exist before, in addition to increasing the productivity of companies. companies in a significant wayâ€, points out the report by Briggs and Kodnani, who cite the case of the appearance of the electric motor or the personal computer in the past decade.
It is still unknown when this will happen – it depends on the advancement of technology and its regulation – but experience shows that the productivity of the labor market explodes 20 years after the irruption of technology. So there are still a couple of decades left to meet the new specialists that this new technology will require.
Given these prospects, Almirall believes that companies and governments cannot look the other way. “Generative AI is such a far-reaching generic technology that we need to harness its potential rather than be frightened by the risks it poses. Legal frictions can be regulated by consensusâ€, points out the professor, who applauds the initiative of the Government of Iceland against the position of Italy, which on Friday decided to ban this technology.
At the moment, in the industry a race to lead the sector has broken out. Today, it is clear that the company that has the singing voice is Microsoft with its million-dollar investment in ChatGPT. “Google and Amazon follow, while China is making little noise by developing its internal technologies. The sector is fed by thousands of startups that we try to complement the service of the star platformâ€, says Eudald CamprubÃ, co-founder of the startup Nuclia, specialized in the search for intelligent data in the sector.
According to data from the consulting firm Pitchbook, investment funds invested 1,260 million euros (about 1,370 million dollars) in startups in this sector, a figure similar to the sum of the investment in the last five years. For this year, Pitchbook forecasts predict that the sector will multiply its business size more than 49,000 million. Artificial intelligence is in full swing.
