As GPT-4 reshapes the labor market, policymakers may soon need answers



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Summary

AI is already transforming jobs, raising serious questions in the process. Policymakers should start looking for answers.

“It happened to me today,” reads a thread on Reddit in which a freelance writer complains that he just lost his “biggest and best” client to ChatGPT. The client had told him that while he wrote better copy than the AI, ChatGPT’s price-performance ratio was simply unbeatable.

“Just be better”

Maybe writers like the anonymous Reddit post just aren’t good enough to keep up with AI, critics say. Just being a little better is no longer enough.

Or as renowned online marketing expert Seth Godin put it last December, “If your work isn’t more useful or insightful or urgent than GPT can create in 12 seconds, don’t interrupt people with it. Technology begins by making old work easier, but then it requires that new work be better.”

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But how much better does it have to be when the competition costs next to nothing? Besides, AI systems are just starting to develop. They can get much better.

And even if they don’t, who cares if the experts who can judge quality in their respective fields are no longer in business? Especially for laymen, price is often the most important factor.

“Yes, I am better than ChatGPT. But, and I will say this again and again, businesses/clients, beyond very high end brands, DO NOT CARE. They have to put profits first. Small businesses especially, but even corporations are always cutting corners,” writes the anonymous Reddit author. No author is safe unless he or she is in the “top one percent,” the author continues.

He or she doesn’t count themselves among them: “I just signed up for Doordash as a driver. I really wish I was kidding.”

“I wish GPT-4 had never happened”

Then there’s Priya’s story, which has been circulating on the Internet for the past few days. She has a bachelor’s degree in biotechnology and works as a biomedical data curator. Her job involves scouring scientific articles for RNA sequencing data, cleaning it up, and annotating it.

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