Experienced employees with tacit knowledge stand a better chance to hang on to their jobs.
Early-career workers, aged 22-25, face a disproportionate threat to job loss from the widespread adoption of generative artificial intelligence (AI), according to a recent research paper from Stanford University.
These workers, in most AI-exposed occupations, have experienced a 13 percent relative decline in employment, said the authors of the research published online on Aug. 26.
“In contrast, employment for workers in less exposed fields and more experienced workers in the same occupations has remained stable or continued to grow.”
The team of researchers—Erik Brynjolfsson, Senior Fellow at Stanford, Bharat Chandar, a postdoctoral researcher, and Ruyu Chen, a research scientist—used data collected from ADP, the largest payroll software provider in the United States.
They found that employment declines in the American labor market are mostly happening in occupations susceptible to AI automation, and not as much in environments where human labor is augmented.
Software developers and customer service representatives were some of the most disrupted work environments following the significant proliferation of AI deployment, according to the researchers. Meanwhile, work for more experienced employees in the same sectors continued to grow.
Employment trends for “workers of all ages in less-exposed occupations such as nursing aides have remained stable,” said the paper.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman made similar observations during a discussion at the Federal Reserve Conference last month.
When asked which areas could see a significant amount of job losses due to AI, Altman said, “Some areas … are totally gone,” a reference to AI service bots replacing customer support human agents.
Altman further talked about the diagnostic capabilities of ChatGPT, but said he would not entrust it with his medical treatment without having a human doctor in the loop. This occupation class will continue to remain, even with AI.
Not All Jobs or Workers
Regarding computer programmers, Altman said they were 10 times more productive compared to before, with salaries rising in Silicon Valley. He did not address any specific categories of programmers.
“Things in the physical world will keep being done by humans for a while, but when this robotics wave comes crashing in, in another three to seven years, I think that’ll be a really big thing for society to reckon with,” said Altman.
