OpenAI has published a paper recently, titled “Measuring the performance of our models on real-world tasks,” which assessed the 44 jobs most likely to be taken over by artificial intelligence.
The study involved using an assessment called GDPval to use the most advanced technology against human workers across the United States’ nine most profitable industries.
According to the study, on average AI performed as well as or better than humans in about 48% of tests. Professions that were hit particularly hard include counter and retail clerks, which lost to AI 81% of the time, and sales managers and shipping clerks, who were outperformed in 80% of the time. Editors (75%), software developers (70%), and private investigators (70%) were also badly hit. Even roles that rely on human interaction, like social workers were not immune to AI, with AI outperforming people in around half the tests.
READ: Anthropic cofounders warn about AI replacing human jobs ‘exponentially’ (
Some creative and leadership positions appeared resistant to AI for now. Film directors, producers, and journalists lost to AI in roughly a third of the trials.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged in a recent interview that the potential for widespread job loss worries him. He stated, “I’m confident that a lot of current customer support that happens over a phone or computer, those people will lose their jobs, and that’ll be better done by an AI.” Altman even indicated that as much as 40% of all jobs could eventually be automated by AI, as per the report.
Altman had mentioned in another recent interview that AI can one day replace the CEO role. “I think there will come a time when AI can be a much better CEO of OpenAI than me – and I will be nothing but enthusiastic the day that happens,” he said during an interview on “MD MEETS” with Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer, the German media and technology company.
“It doesn’t scare me, it doesn’t make me sad, it’s just like I did this one thing that has been automated and I wanted it to be automated and that’s kind of what we’re doing,” he added.
READ: IBM CEO Arvind Krishna believes AI will not replace humans (
Concerns about AI replacing jobs have been on the rise ever since the technology took off. Anthropic cofounders Dario Amodei and Jack Clark sounded the alarm regarding artificial intelligence possibly replacing human jobs during an Axios event recently.
Amodei said that as with most things, “when an exponential is moving very quickly, you can’t be sure.” However, not everyone sees AI as a threat. IBM CEO Arvind Krishna recently said that he believed humans will not be replaced by artificial intelligence. During an onstage interview at South by Southwest (SXSW) conference on Tuesday, he stated he disagreed with Amodei’s prediction that 90% of code may be written by AI in the next three to six months.
“I think the number is going to be more like 20-30% of the code could get written by AI — not 90%,” Krishna said. “Are there some really simple use cases? Yes, but there’s an equally complicated number of ones where it’s going to be zero.”