The mass deployment of the ChatGPT neural network in the United States has yet to have a significant impact on employment in the country, according to a study conducted by the Yale University Budget Lab and the Brookings Institution, amid widespread concerns that generative AI will lead to job losses and even the disappearance of certain professions.
Since the chatbot's launch in November 2022, generative AI has not had a more significant impact on employment than previous technological advances, including the advent of computers and the Internet. “Despite rapid advances in AI technology, the job market over the past three years has been a story of continuity, not change,”, the Financial Times (FT) quoted co-author Molly Kinder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, as saying. “We are not experiencing an economy-wide employment apocalypse right now; the situation is broadly stable. That should give some hope to a worried public,” she said.
According to Martha Gimbel, co-author of the report and director of the Yale Budget Lab, “the job market is not doing well, so the claim that AI is taking jobs may seem true.” “But we looked at it from a variety of angles and found no evidence that this is actually happening,“ she said.
The researchers also found no convincing evidence that college graduates in the world's largest economy are struggling to find jobs because of the development of generative AI. The unemployment rate among bachelor's degree holders aged 20-24 rose to 9.3% in August, more than double the 4.4% recorded in April. However, there was virtually no difference between the jobs available to graduates aged 20-24 and those available to graduates aged 25-29.
The lack of change in occupational patterns suggests that the difficulties in finding jobs for college graduates have little to do with technological change, the report said. These results contradict claims by technology executives that "generative artificial intelligence is rapidly changing the job market," the publication said.
According to Nobel laureate in economics Daron Acemoglu, "managers are under enormous pressure to do something with AI, and the hype around it is contributing to that." "But so far, few people are doing anything truly creative with it," he added.