ChatGPT is Stealing your Job. Don't Worry, it's Hiring Assistants*

Abstract

Critics of generative AI like ChatGPT claim that it will replace critical thinking, and nowhere does this risk appear more striking than at work. Yet the debate over AI’s effect on work focuses almost exclusively on AI’s capabilities - just how good is it at replicating human text? - rather than on who will eventually own this technology and to what use they will put it. Only by focusing on these latter questions can we understand ChatGPT’s likely effect on work and, more broadly, critical thinking.

Most working people do not own the technology they use at work. That technology is provided by their company, and for the company, ChatGPT is a labor-saving technology. If we look at the history of labor-saving technology in the United States, we see that while a large majority of people retained their jobs or found new ones once their old jobs were automated, the character of those jobs changed significantly. Many highly-automated manufacturing jobs are simpler, less meaningful, and require less critical thinking than when they were performed manually. What’s responsible for this change in job character? It is not the capabilities of any particular labor-saving technology, but the way those technologies are used to reduce workers' judgment and agency at work. When labor-saving technology is used to replace workers' judgment and agency, those workers become “assistants” to that technology rather than vice versa.

While machinery replaced blue collar work in the 20th century, ChatGPT’s ability to generate human-like text means it will replace white-collar work in this century. And, if our history of automation is any indication, you will likely get to keep your job, but this time as an assistant to an AI that performs it form you. Again, this is not because ChatGPT can “think for you” while, say, car-manufacturing robots cannot. The particular differences between these technologies are irrelevant so long as both will be used to reduce workers' opportunities to think critically on the job.