While emerging AI technologies such as ChatGPT may pose a threat to certain employment opportunities in the coming years, this is not all bad news: the proliferation of AI may give rise to entirely new occupations for future workers.
As per a report published by the World Economic Forum in September, occupations such as bank tellers, telemarketers, credit authorizers, and statistical assistants are among the sectors most susceptible to eventual replacement by artificial intelligence. The report, which assessed the AI exposure of more than 19,000 job tasks across 867 occupations, also identified a number of domains where AI-related employment opportunities will continue to expand in the coming years.
Meta, Amazon, and Capital One are among the companies that have posted over 10,000 generative AI-related job openings so far this year, according to a recent study by the research firm Lightcast. Certain job postings specify salaries in excess of $100,000.
Although these positions will presumably demand specific levels of proficiency, it is conceivable that online courses and training programmes may offer a more feasible alternative to obtaining a college degree for numerous Americans seeking employment in the AI sector.
As an example, Chris Hyams, CEO of the job site Indeed, wrote in a September essay, “With AI, it is possible that students will acquire skills in college that will be obsolete by the time they graduate.”
Five new occupations may be created in the future as a result of AI, according to the World Economic Forum.
AI model and prompt engineers
To test and refine chatbot responses, an AI prompt engineer creates questions. According to James Neave, head of data science at job search engine Adzuna, this position, which pays up to $375,000 annually, may be “the job of 2024.
Before generative AI gained popularity, this position didn’t even exist, but now that it has, employers are scrambling to find candidates who can maximize the potential of the emerging technologies, he said. There aren’t many job openings for this position right now, but that’s expected to change as more businesses try to realize the benefits of generative AI.
Experts predict that engineers will be required to direct the development of new AI tools as they continue to emerge.
Designers of user interfaces and interactions
Not everyone feels that ChatGPT is simple to learn, despite your opinion. AI tools may need to be modified by interface and interaction designers in order to improve their usability and accessibility for a broader range of users.
AI designers were probably at work when OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, recently released a version of the chatbot that can react to voice commands.
AI content producers
According to a World Economic Forum report, “AI content creators” will be able to “rapidly produce in-depth content on a topic in any field or domain” with the help of AI tools. These materials may consist of books, articles, scripts for movies, music, and teaching resources.
In the course of writing her next film, for instance, a screenwriter might incorporate an AI tool, but she would still view herself as a screenwriter and not as an AI content creator.
But as some people grow more accustomed to using specific AI tools and become experts at doing so, a whole new class of jobs may develop.
A May survey of 660 US creators by the marketing firm The Influencer Marketing Factory revealed that nearly 95% of traditional content creators—bloggers, social media influencers, and videographers—already use AI to help them with their work.
Data curators and trainers
An infinite amount of data from books, articles, and websites is used to train AI tools such as ChatGPT; however, the quality of a chatbot’s output is only as good as the quality of the data used to train it.
The task of overseeing and assessing the quality of the data used in AI models will fall to data curators and trainers.
The World Economic Forum report concluded that “data quality and integrity checks are critical and will lead to the development of a dedicated, specialized workforce.”
Ethics and governance specialists
AI chatbots are not flawless. According to the World Economic Forum report, they are able to produce disinformation in addition to biased, harmful, and unethical content. Data curators and trainers would bear some of the responsibility for mitigating these adverse effects, but experts in ethics and governance might examine and evaluate AI instruments prior to their public release.
According to the World Economic Forum report, government regulators and lawyers will probably play a role in addition to AI companies hiring some of these people.
