How AI Is Already Reshaping White-Collar Work | WSJ

the idea of robots taking human jobsmight bring to mind a scene like thisbut it's not Hardware that has whitecollar workers concerned it's rapidlyadvancing software since artificialintelligence is doing a lot more thanfinishing emails perhaps the biggestnightmare is the looming new IndustrialRevolution the erosion of the middleclassalready one of America's most seriousproblemscould get much worse with AI if weignore it here's how AI is alreadytaking over tasks at White Collar jobsand why employees and companies are bothexcited and concerned for the future ofworkgenerative AI can auto-complete yoursentences write feature length films ororganize your calendar and tools usingit like chat GPT are taking on anincreasing role in White Collar workthey can create first drafts ofdocuments presentations images video andproduct designs currently 25 of worktasks could be automated by AI in the USaccording to Goldman Sachs researchgenerative AI helped make this ad andthis one too the company advertised heresaid creating the image for this AIgenerated ad cost about 10 times lessthan traditional methods this works muchin the same way as other kinds of AIwhich are using statistical methods onlarge amounts of data processing thatthrough computational Power and thengenerating out a computer vision systemthat says this image looks a lot likethese other cats that I've been trainedon generative AI is is functionally verysimilar it goes beyond creating imagesalphabet is now using AI to runanti-money laundering surveillanceprograms at Banks like HSBC and saysit's cutting out human error and whenthe transactional data and illicitbehaviors change as they do so does theAML AI engine for some tech companies AIis contributing to job cuts a May reportsaid nearly 4 000 Tech workers losttheir jobs to AI artificial intelligenceis also eliminating future positionstake IBM as an example its CEO said thecompany could replace workers with AI Ido believe that AI is going to replace alot of what I'm calling white-collarclerical jobs so the the ones that aremuch more repetitive the ones wherepeople do the same task again and againand again I think a good 30 percent ofthose roles could go away over fiveyears companies are making evaluationsabout future hiring on the basis of whatthey project AI to be capable of doingthat's a much more tenuous area an IBMspokesman said the company was stillhiring for thousands of positions Ithink that what we've seen in pastdeployments of AI is that it'sfrequently used as a justification forlayoffs but it doesn't necessarily meanthat it is effectively replacing whathuman workers are capable of or thatit's increasing workers productivityDropbox laid off 16 of its Workforce inApril but not to replace workers likeIBM it said it wanted to invest more inAI which meant cutting elsewhere so weseedemand growing for these products a lotfaster than we could have anticipatedand I think you could have seen thetechnology coming but just the way thatthe interest went vertical is somethingthat's way ahead of schedule from fromour expectation at openai execs saythere may be more work I think that likethe kind of sum total of what is goingto be needed to make use of thetechnology as a maximally productivetechnology and kind of inflect thatproductivity curve up in the world willactually require more man hours on topthan uh than you think but acrossIndustries workers and executives arecautiously looking aheadai's role in television and filmproduction is a key point ofnegotiations between The Writers Guildof America and the studiosspeaking to the Wall Street Journalabout the strike the co-showrunner forthe handmaid's tale laid out thewriter's Union's concernsyou know we can tell we could tell fromthe negotiations that the studios wantedto had a plan and we could deduce thatthat plan was probably one writer in aroom with one or two machines creatingan entire show Studios have said theyare committed to discussing the use ofAI with the wga the wga strike I thinkis a really importantmoment to be paying attention to becauseit's a place where workers have takenthe Forefront in putting AI at the frontand center of their negotiations abouttheir working conditions if it's comingfor us the creators of imaginary worldsit is literally going to come foreveryone but there may still be time tofigure out how to best integrate AI intothe workplace so I think it's reallyimportant that in the present moment wepreserve space for a public conversationaround the deployment of AI systems thatensures that they're working in thepublic interest in workers interest andas well as an employer's interestsforeign