New research by Imperial College London highlights growing concerns about AI's impact on the labor market. While a decade-old Oxford University study examined technology's effects on employment, these concerns have intensified with AI's increasing integration into everyday life. The study by Imperial College looks at effects AI can cause in the freelance market such as graphic designing and content writing. For the study, the researchers looked at 1.4 million freelancing jobs posted on different websites from July 2021 and July 2023. The results of the study showed that there was a 30% drop in jobs related to content writing because of artificial intelligence. Even though there is only a slight drop in jobs related to web development and software development due to AI, the jobs are still less than what they were before AI. There was also some drop in jobs related to graphic designing and 3D Modeling after AI models like DALL-E-2 and Midjourney got introduced.
The researchers say that this drop doesn't seem to be temporary because now companies are experimenting with newer technologies which can make their work easier and automated. The researchers compared this decline in jobs caused by AI to the loss of factory jobs during the automation era, when robots replaced human workers. But the drop because of robotic implementation in factories wasn't as much as drop in jobs due to current AI wave. One of the researches show that when there was a 20% increase in robots adoption in France, there was only a 3% drop in jobs in industries and factories. This is actually concerning, especially the drop in content writing jobs because it makes us question our capabilities as AI is more than enough to write content. But there are many problems regarding ChatGPT’s research on various topics and the content it produces doesn't stand out too much.
University of Alberta names content generated by AI as “botshit” and University of Zurich says that AI generated content is less trustworthy to readers if it is labeled as AI generated. Instead of completely relying on AI, organizations are asking writers to oversee AI generated content and make it more human-like. This means a pay cut for writers and they cannot show their capabilities and creativity fully, as well as their identity and motivation. Employees are not happy with this deployment of AI because it is adding no value to the work and they cannot engage fully with what they work for.
Image: DIW-Aigen
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The researchers say that this drop doesn't seem to be temporary because now companies are experimenting with newer technologies which can make their work easier and automated. The researchers compared this decline in jobs caused by AI to the loss of factory jobs during the automation era, when robots replaced human workers. But the drop because of robotic implementation in factories wasn't as much as drop in jobs due to current AI wave. One of the researches show that when there was a 20% increase in robots adoption in France, there was only a 3% drop in jobs in industries and factories. This is actually concerning, especially the drop in content writing jobs because it makes us question our capabilities as AI is more than enough to write content. But there are many problems regarding ChatGPT’s research on various topics and the content it produces doesn't stand out too much.
University of Alberta names content generated by AI as “botshit” and University of Zurich says that AI generated content is less trustworthy to readers if it is labeled as AI generated. Instead of completely relying on AI, organizations are asking writers to oversee AI generated content and make it more human-like. This means a pay cut for writers and they cannot show their capabilities and creativity fully, as well as their identity and motivation. Employees are not happy with this deployment of AI because it is adding no value to the work and they cannot engage fully with what they work for.
Read next: Global Survey Unveils Influencer Aspirations, Social Media Trends, and AI's Growing Role in Content Creation
