Professional/technical, business, and public administration jobs are some of the top ones AI could affect.
The rapid start of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in November 2022 has sped up the talk about artificial intelligence, or AI. As we figure out what effects advanced AI apps might have, the impact on jobs is at the top of the list.
In July, two critical studies about AI taking over jobs were released. On July 11, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said, “27% of jobs are in high-risk occupations for automation.”
Later that month, Pew Research came out with a similar finding: “In 2022, 19% of American workers will be in jobs that are most likely to be affected by AI, meaning that AI could replace or help with the most important tasks.”
So, in our second yearly study about how Americans see the future, we asked them what they thought about AI and work.
In the big picture, our study showed that Americans know how important AI is: 48% of Americans think it is essential to the future economic growth of the United States.
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Americans aren’t scared that AI will take their jobs, but they are worried that it will take other people’s jobs.
First, we asked if Americans “generally” worried about AI taking their jobs. The choices were “very worried,” “somewhat worried,” and “not worried at all.” Only one in five Americans are not at all worried. Four out of five Americans said they were at least concerned or apprehensive. About one out of every five Americans is very worried.
Next, we asked Americans if they feared their jobs being taken over by AI. Three out of five Americans were surprisingly “not worried at all.” Only one out of every ten Americans was “very worried.” This study was done with people who represent all Americans well.
This result is very similar to a poll done as part of a different Center for Growth and Opportunity study on the future of work. This study also used a poll to determine how Americans felt about technology and how it affected their jobs. For example, people were asked if they thought their job would still exist in 30 years. Three of every four Americans said their position would remain for 30 years.
Automation and robots, which are sometimes considered AI but not always, have been known for a long time to take over routine jobs like putting together cars. But not everything is terrible. In 2020, my partner Erica Jednyak and I wrote that these changes often lead to lower prices and better quality for Americans.
ChatGPT and generative AI have opened up a whole new group of artistic and intellectual jobs at the risk of being replaced by machines. This is something that has already happened to repetitive jobs. According to the Pew study above, the top three job groups with the most “exposure” to AI are professional, scientific, technical services, banking, insurance, real estate, and public administration.
We asked respondents if they thought AI would “help” or “hurt” people working in fields like law, medicine, engineering, news, customer service, science, publishing, management, K-12 education, manufacturing, and transportation.
Americans thought AI was most likely to hurt news and customer service by ten percentage points compared to the other job groups.
These numbers tell us a few things about how Americans feel about this new technology.
Most Americans don’t worry about AI taking away their jobs because they know them well. Talking about “jobs out there” or “generally,” as we did can be a vague idea that doesn’t consider all the different parts that make up even simple jobs.
For a very long time, it was believed that AI-controlled, self-driving trucks would threaten long-haul trucking. However, companies and academics keep finding new problems on the road that a person can only solve. Complete substitute has been hard to find and probably will be for a long time.
This trend is similar to how new tools have been used. People have always been afraid that new tools will take away their jobs. But history also shows that even though some jobs are lost, more are created, or the ones left are made more effective. That seems to be clear to Americans.
This result could also show that people don’t know enough about what AI can do. Every worker in every field should know what uses and applications are possible in their area. Based on what we know about AI tools so far, they are not likely to completely replace jobs. Instead, they are more likely to improve and add to existing jobs.
With generative AI tools like ChatGPT, repetitious and expected tasks could no longer be replaced or changed. Instead, missions like writing and analyzing could be replaced or altered.
Our study can show lawmakers and reporters who write about AI that people in the U.S. have many different thoughts about this exciting technology. As we learn how AI will affect our economy, these two groups can use their platforms to give us sensible research and information.
