Employment experts warn which workers are most at risk of being replaced by AI
The pandemic shifted how we work, with many of us now enjoying part - or full-time - working from home.
It's pretty glorious, because you can wear your pajamas and put a wash on, all while doing your job.
But there's a potential dark side to all this, and employment experts have warned that fully remote workers are most at risk of being replaced by AI.
Advert
That's what Nicholas Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University who studies remote employment, has said.
"If you think of data entry, call centers, HR, payroll - this kind of thing that's fully remote - a lot of this may be replaced by AI in five to 10 years," Bloom is reported as telling Bloomberg, while noting that fully remote workers represent around 10% of the American and Northern European workforce.
It's pretty terrifying stuff if you want to, you know, keep getting paid - so what can you do to protect yourself?
Bloom told Business Insider that the best thing you can do is "be in a role that requires some in-person interaction, even if that's every other month.
"To meet co-workers, manage, or mentor every other month creates an activity that AI cannot do."
But it's not all bad news - particularly if you're partially remote.
Bloom reportedly told Bloomberg that hybrid workers - who go into an office a few times a week - could be more productive with the help of AI.
"For hybrid workers, I don't see in the near term that it's really a threat. If anything, it's maybe supporting that job," he said.
Plus, if you have a job that requires physical labor or is highly specialized, you might be safer from AI for a bit longer.
OpenAI's generative chatbot program ChatGPT is just over a year old, so we're really at the early stages of discovering how AI will change the world - and how we work.
In March, Goldman Sachs released a report saying that AI could impact around 300 million full-time jobs.
But, in a similar stance to Bloom, the study noted: “Although the impact of AI on the labor market is likely to be significant, most jobs and industries are only partially exposed to automation and are thus more likely to be complemented rather than substituted by AI."
Earlier this month, EU negotiators reached a deal on the world's first comprehensive AI rules. It paved the way for legal oversight of the tech used in popular AI services - such as ChatGPT.
But officials didn't really elaborate on what will eventually make its way into law, which won't come into effect until 2025 at the earliest.
With AI changing so rapidly around us, we're going to have to try our best to keep up with it.