Yale researchers play down effects of AI-related job losses

Artificial intelligence is yet to take a lot of jobs as predicted by technology executives, a study carried out by Yale University’s Budget Lab and the Brookings Institution has revealed. It has been three years since AI became mainstream through the introduction of ChatGPT, and the report claims that Americans are still showing up to their jobs in droves.

According to the report, the researchers looked into federal employment data through July. The researchers also tracked how quickly the mix of occupations changed since November 2022, when OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public.

The report also noted that while jobs shifted slightly faster in recent years, about a percentage point higher than the early 2000s internet boom, the changes appear to be normal for technological transitions rather than the economic upheaval that many feared.

Yale study finds that AI has yet to take lots of jobs

Tech firm executives have predicted that artificial intelligence may soon start to take plenty of jobs, but the report finds that it may not happen soon. “We are not in an economy-wide jobs apocalypse right now; it’s mostly stable,” Molly Kinder, a senior fellow at Brookings and co-author of the paper, told The Financial Times. “That should be a reassuring message to an anxious public.”

In addition, the gap between Silicon Valley rhetoric and workplace reality has grown bleak. As previously reported by Cryptopolitan, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei mentioned earlier this year that more than 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs could disappear in the next five years. The company also created an initiative, the Economic Futures Program, to track the impact of artificial intelligecnce on the labor market and the global economy earlier this year.

Meanwhile, Geoffrey Hinton, known as the Godfather of artificial intelligence, mentioned that the financial gap could be dramatically worsened by AI if things continue to go the way they have been going in the last few years.

“What’s actually going to happen is rich people are going to use AI to replace workers,” he told the Financial Times. “It’s going to create massive unemployment and a huge rise in profits. It will make a few people much richer and most people poorer. That’s not AI’s fault, that is the capitalist system.”

Study shows little or no effect across fields

Over the last few years, OpenAI’s Sam Altman has singled out customer service jobs as the most vulnerable, with a study arguing that the tech matched skilled human workers in at least 44 business areas.

However, data tells a different story. The Yale researchers claimed they examined multiple metrics, including occupational mix changes, industry-specific shifts, and artificial intelligence exposure levels across different job categories. They claimed that workers most exposed to artificial intelligence automation showed no signs of displacement.

The information sector, which includes newspapers, movies, and data processing, showed the largest occupational shift. Notably, these changes began before the release of ChatGPT, suggesting that most of the changes are due to industry-specific factors. Finance and professional services also showed the same pattern, showing that movements had happened before the artificial intelligence evolution.

Researchers also claimed that young college graduates have struggled in terms of employment, with unemployment among 20-24 year olds with bachelor’s degrees rising to 9.3% in August from 4.4% in April.

But the research team noted that the pattern matched that of older degree orders aged between 25 and 29, indicating that there is a labor market slowdown rather than artificial intelligence replacement. The dissimilarity between these age groups has fluctuated between 30% and 33% since 2021, showing no rise after the release of ChatGPT.

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