Last week, the New York Times published a much-discussed article attempting to tackle one of the questions everyone is asking: How will we use AI?
The NYT detailed specific ways that people are using artificial intelligence in their work. It’s a good list and does readers the service of demystifying the technology. More important, thinking about existing (though nascent) concrete use cases — e.g., selecting wines for restaurant menus, creating lesson plans, and typing up medical notes — can help fire the imagination of managers and executives to think up new ones.
But the use of AI technology is already broader than many people think. Here’s a recent summary from OpenAI:
Over half a billion people around the world actively use OpenAI’s AI tools, especially our freely available ChatGPT. They send more than 2.5 billion messages to the platform per day — including more than 330 million per day in the US. This breadth of use offers a unique window onto AI’s impacts on the economy. ChatGPT has saved teachers nearly six hours per week.
OpenAI, with which I am doing some work, released last month its first look at how its tools are being used. The pace of adoption has been remarkable:
ChatGPT is the fastest-adopted consumer technology in history, reaching 1 million users in five days, 100 million users in two months, and over 500 million users today. Since launch, we have seen a dramatic increase in use of ChatGPT for work. Today, 28% of employed US adults report using ChatGPT at work, compared to just 8% in 2023.
Check out the full OpenAI report, which goes through attributes that speed adoption, breaks down the ways in which Americans are using ChatGPT (the most common use is learning and upskilling), the states with the fastest user growth (including my home state of Kansas!), and the technology’s role in advancing entrepreneurship.
When thinking about how AI is likely to reshape the labor market, it is important to remember that many of the occupations that will use AI have not been invented. From my recent National Affairs article:
The AI revolution will create many opportunities that we cannot conceive today. Standing in the year 2024 and trying to predict the jobs of the future is no easier than standing in the year 1944 and trying to predict that the labor market of the future would contain systems analysts, circuit-layout designers, fiber scientists, and social-media managers. In fact, about 60% of jobs held by workers in 2018 had not been invented as of 1940. New occupations emerge in large part because technology advances, creating new goods and services that in turn require human workers to engage in new occupational tasks. Technological advances also make society wealthier, increasing the demand for goods and services — especially new goods and services — which in turn raises the demand for workers’ skills, talents, and efforts.
To illustrate, imagine trying to explain to the 19th-century classical economist David Ricardo the jobs of all the people who support Bruce Springsteen’s records and tours: sound engineers, digital editors, graphic designers, photographers, videographers, art directors, instrument technicians, social-media directors, marketing professionals, bookers, stage hands, sound directors, lighting engineers, body men, commercial-vehicle drivers, and, of course, the jobs of the members of the mighty E Street Band and Mr. Springsteen himself. These occupations and the tasks workers perform for them did not exist in Ricardo’s time because the technology that enables them had not been invented. They also did not exist because the wealth created by today’s technology had not been generated: Society in Ricardo’s day could not have afforded rock bands.
As for existing jobs, I speculate with three examples:
First, let’s take the case of lawyers and paralegals. These individuals will need to spend much less time writing briefs and classifying documents — two tasks that large language models will be able to perform — than they do now. This will give them more time to spend interviewing witnesses and developing legal strategy. AI tools will help lawyers complete these tasks by proposing potential questions to ask witnesses and lines of argument to support a broader strategy. But AI will not be able to effectively interview witnesses or set the strategy itself. Some law firms experimenting with AI tools today are finding it is allowing junior associates to advance faster because it is so efficient at performing basic legal research, thereby jump-starting careers.
Second, consider the case of physicians. Because AI systems will be able to read and interpret scans and test results more effectively and inexpensively than humans can, physicians will need to spend much less time performing those tasks. AI tools will also be able to record and update patient information in medical charts and records by listening in when physicians are examining patients. This will allow physicians to spend more time communicating with patients, thereby increasing the quality and effectiveness of those conversations. For advanced illnesses, it will grant physicians more time to coordinate with other physicians to manage care comprehensively.
Retail-store managers — a third example — will need to spend less time managing employees’ schedules and the cycle of inventory; AI tools will be able to complete those tasks for them. This will give managers more time to oversee and coach workers, solve problems, and create a positive shopping experience for customers. AI will also assist managers by making suggestions to optimize the shopping experience in the store and proposing potential management strategies based on an employee’s career history and other factors.
Of course, there are risks to this technology, as well. (For a good discussion, see the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine report, “Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work,” for which I was a coauthor.)
But we should be optimistic about AI — even if we aren’t quite sure how it will affect us. And the early use cases that are emerging are another good reason for optimism.