Researchers asked ChatGPT to rate which job skills it performs best. Its answers show what roles are most at risk for AI disruption – Fortune
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Before mid-2022, jobs considered most likely impacted by AI or automation might have been roles like factory line work or customer service positions. That’s changed thanks to the advancement of generative AI. Today, jobs requiring tech, administrative, and marketing skills are considered most at risk for AI disruption, according to research from Indeed’s Hiring Lab, released on Thursday.
Researchers at the Hiring Lab identified 2,600 skills listed in job postings on the career site’s platform. They sorted them into 48 separate skill families, ranging from administrative skills to driving to expertise in beauty and wellness.
The researchers then tasked ChatGPT with assessing its aptitude for each skill family, ranging from poor to excellent. According to the chatbot’s assessment, it would be “excellent” in just four categories, “good” in another 16, and either “poor” or “fair” in the remaining 28 skill families. ChatGPT considers itself to be most adept in software development, IT operations and helpdesk support, and mathematics. It rated itself worst at skills that require high levels of physical interaction, like driving, beauty and wellness, and personal care and home health.
Despite rating itself strongly on about 41% of all skill categories, generative AI still has a ways to go before taking over most peoples’ jobs. The report also found that just one-fifth of all job postings analyzed would be at risk of “high exposure” to generative AI, meaning ChatGPT could perform “good” or “excellent” at 80% or more of all skills listed in these job postings. Under half (45.7%) of all jobs are at “medium exposure.”
“The thing that we really want people to understand is not to try to freak out about, ‘my job is going away,’ but definitely to prepare because these jobs are going to change dramatically,” says Indeed CEO Chris Hyams. “It’s kind of like looking at rolling back the clock, 20 years or so, to how the internet would impact work.”
This impact may already be showing up in the jobs that rely on the skill areas in which ChatGPT rates itself strongly. Indeed finds that the number of software engineer job postings declined 58% from August 2022 to 2023, compared to a 40% decline of all tech industry jobs in that same period. Similarly, job postings for copywriters fell 53% between August 2022 and 2023, while marketing industry jobs declined 26% year-over-year. How much of that decline is attributable to economic constraints and the hiring correction in certain industries isn’t clear.
Meanwhile, interest in generative AI from job seekers and recruiters has skyrocketed. Job postings for generative AI roles grew 160% between August 2022 and 2023.
“Whether ChatGPT can do [a job] effectively doesn’t matter. It’s whether employers think it can,” says Hyams. “We certainly have seen that happening, where people are starting to use it for things they weren’t before.”
Paige McGlauflin
paige.mcglauflin@fortune.com
@paidion
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At Indeed's annual FutureWorks conference on Thursday, Haben Girma, a human rights lawyer who is deaf and blind, shared a reminder of how tech “disruptions” can unintentionally impact marginalized people.
Girma recalled trying to use an elevator while visiting a law firm, but the building replaced its elevator buttons with a touch screen that she could not use as a deaf and blind person.
“For most of my life, elevators were a symbol of accessibility…they normally have Braille buttons,” she said. “This symbol of accessibility is now being taken away by tech designs that don't include disabled people. So tech can make things worse and take away freedoms we used to have, or it can create opportunities.”
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