Because the disturbingly rapid rise in artificial intelligence tools threatens to wipe out tens of millions of jobs around the globe, a small variety of the “overemployed” are exploiting tools like ChatGPT to secretly work multiple full-time jobs.
Generative AI, which is capable of churn out content corresponding to essays, blogs, poems, computing code, web sites, artwork and even music that in some cases is indistinguishable from human work, has seen a rapid explosion over the past 12 months with programs like ChapGPT, Dall-E and Midjourney taking the web by storm.
Among the many “overemployed” — a small online community of those quietly working multiple jobs, a trend that began to take off during COVID as more people worked from home — the technology has been quickly adopted.
Chatting with Vice News, quite a lot of people working multiple jobs explained how ChatGPT had allowed them to tackle much more work, leaving employers none the wiser.
One online marketer dubbed “Ben” said ChatGPT was “the one reason” he got his second job this 12 months — and he even used it to generate cover letters to use for jobs.
“ChatGPT does like 80 percent of my job if I’m being honest,” he said.
“I can just tell it to create a story [for an upcoming product release] and it just does it for me, based off the context that I gave it.”
One other marketer said he could “crank out a blog post in, you already know, 45 minutes now, as opposed to 3 hours — it’s insane.”
A technology employee told the publication that ChatGPT had allowed him to go from two jobs to 4, but that “five would probably be overkill.”
And a university lecturer said he secretly runs two corporations on the side from his laptop while at work, with ChatGPT doing 80% of the legwork corresponding to business plans, blog posts and Excel spreadsheets.
One employee, a software engineer dubbed “Charles”, revealed he was already earning $500,000 from two jobs, had a net value $3 million, and hoped to extend his salary to $800,000 with a 3rd job.
On Reddit’s “Overemployed” forum, users explained various ways the technology had made it easier to drag off their side hustle.
“It’s really good at putting together the skeleton of a program you desire to write starting with just general prompts … ChatGPT will give me a semi-broken program that I can take a look at after which start correcting it on the identical chat until it approximates something I can test. Saves a ton of time,” one programmer wrote.
“Web marketing here. I’m using it for writing content that’s Search engine optimisation-focused. Also paid campaigns are a snap. I just copy and paste all the page’s content and ask it for just a few headlines that rhyme. Throw some money behind it and I actually have a paid campaign,” one other said.
“I used to ‘workshop’ content. Now I write higher than my writers do, and my boss thinks I’m a literal genius (the word genius was used). Also, I actually have done a bunch of labor already and just sandbagging the work. He tried to advertise me and make me run the team.
“This job was already easy for me (marketing for 10+ years), but now it’s even easier.”
A 3rd agreed, “ChatGPT is a must have tool for OE. It’s an assistant that may enable you together with your writing, ideas, explaining, writing code, and quicker research.
“It will make you much quicker and more efficient in your journey.”
300 million jobs in danger
Last month, investment bank Goldman Sachs said generative AI was a “major advancement” and will replace the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs around the globe.
Goldman Sachs analysts warned in their report that “significant disruption” was on the best way for the labor market, with an estimated two-thirds of jobs capable of be automated to at the least some extent.
Within the US, “of those occupations that are exposed, most have a major — but partial — share of their workload (25-50%) that will be replaced,” the report said.
Goldman Sachs listed office administrative support, legal, architecture and engineering, business and financial operations, management, sales, healthcare, and art and design because the sectors most liable to automation.
While AI could replace a major proportion of labor tasks, it may result in recent jobs and a productivity boom, in accordance with the report, which predicts it could eventually increase total global GDP by 7%.
OpenAI, the corporate behind ChatGPT, released its own paper last month outlining which jobs are most exposed to the technology.
Mathematicians, writers and authors, public relations specialists, journalists, news analysts, interpreters, accountants and web designers are amongst the numerous occupations with the very best exposure, OpenAI’s researchers found.
“Most occupations exhibit some extent of exposure to LLMs [large language models], with higher-wage occupations generally presenting more tasks with high exposure,” the paper said.
“Our evaluation indicates that roughly 19% of jobs have at the least 50% of their tasks exposed to LLMs when considering each current model capabilities and anticipated LLM-powered software.”
The researchers also listed 34 occupations which, unsurprisingly, face no risk from ChatGPT — stonemasons, waiters, bricklayers, slaughterers, painters and cooks are all secure.
“AI is replacing the white-collar staff. I don’t think anyone can stop that,” Pengcheng Shi, an associate dean within the Department of Computing and knowledge sciences at Rochester Institute of Technology, told The Post in January.
“This shouldn’t be crying wolf.
“The wolf is on the door.”
