Finance & economics | Boy cries wolf

AI is not yet killing jobs

White-collar workers are ever more numerous

Commuters on their way to work in the business district, New York City.
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|San Francisco

After astonishing breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, many people worry that they will end up on the economic scrapheap. Global Google searches for “is my job safe?” have doubled in recent months, as people fear that they will be replaced with large language models (llms). Some evidence suggests that widespread disruption is coming. In a recent paper Tyna Eloundou of Openai and colleagues say that “around 80% of the us workforce could have at least 10% of their work tasks affected by the introduction of llms”. Another paper suggests that legal services, accountancy and travel agencies will face unprecedented upheaval.

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This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Boy cries wolf”

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From the June 17th 2023 edition

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