The arrival of generative AI has raised worries that chatbots will replace freelance writers, editors, coders, telemarketers, customer-service reps, paralegals and many more.“AI is going to eliminate a lot of current jobs, and this is going to change the way that a lot of current jobs function,’' Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, said in a discussion at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in May. Yet the widespread assumption that AI chatbots will inevitably replace service workers, the way physical robots took many factory and warehouse jobs, isn’t becoming reality in any widespread way — not yet, anyway. And maybe it never will. The White House Council of Economic Advisers said last month that it found “little evidence that AI will negatively impact overall employment.’’ The advisers noted that history shows technology typically makes companies more productive, speeding economic growth and creating new types of jobs in unexpected ways.
