Many companies and contractors are looking to AI for free labor at the cost of people's jobs.
A now-former content writer recently told The Washington Post his story about how ChatGPT affected his livelihood and future after his clients turned to the AI tool to do the work he used to do.
This former writer isn't the only one who lost their job to AI - around 4,000 people got laid off because of AI tools like ChatGPT.
AI Job Replacement Details
34-year-old Eric Fein was once a Content Writer working for ten clients to make ends meet. For $60 an hour, he would write almost anything from 150-word descriptions of bath mats to website copy for cannabis companies, per The Washington Post.
Through the money he earns from the ten clients, he was able to have an annual income enough to provide a comfortable life for his wife and two-year-old son. However, he soon received notes from his clients stating his services were no longer needed due to their transition to OpenAI's ChatGPT; his livelihood evaporated overnight.
"It wiped me out," Fein said.
Although Fein urged his clients to reconsider, saying that ChatGPT can't write content with his level of creativity, technical precision, and originality, his clients didn't budge from their decision because ChatGPT was free and that it was cheaper for them to use the AI tool then pay him an hourly wage.
One of Fein's clients did eventually hire him back due to their dissatisfaction with ChatGPT's work, but the income from this job wouldn't support his family in the long run. Fein's family only had enough money saved to last them six months.
As a result, Fein decided to learn to be an HVAC technician and a plumber after that - jobs that ChatGPT and AI couldn't do.
"A trade is more future-proof," Fein said.
AI Replacing People In The Job Market
Fein is just one of many people going out of a job because of the technological advancements in AI. You may recall that 3,900 people in the tech industry cited AI as the reason why they lost their jobs, though this amount didn't compare to the number of lost jobs for other reasons, such as market and economic conditions, cost-cutting, restructuring, and mergers and acquisitions.
A Business Insider report citing an analysis from Goldman Sachs said that generative AI like ChatGPT and DALL-E 2 could significantly disrupt the labor market by affecting around 300 million jobs globally, with white-collar jobs in administration and legal industries being jobs at most risk of being replaced by AI.
Other jobs in which AI could replace humans include surgical doctors, soldiery in the military, driving (which is already happening thanks to autonomous cars), and architecture thanks to the capability of generative AI to create blueprints based on specific text prompts while applying architectural principles.
Related Article: Around 4,000 People Lost Their Jobs to AI, Report Finds
