The executives behind big generative artificial intelligence companies are quick to claim their products will displace huge numbers of workers. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei made headlines in May by saying generative AI could wipe out half of entry-level white-collar jobs in the next few years. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in April that he wants AI to be writing half of the company's code in the next year. And Americans believe it -- a recent Pew survey found 64% of Americans expect fewer jobs thanks to AI.
In this environment, it's easy to see research about AI-vulnerable jobs and start to panic. When Microsoft researchers put out a report in July with a tidy list of jobs with tasks that most and least overlapped with tasks that could be done by gen AI, it spurred consternation among those whose jobs were at the top of the chart. But dig a little deeper and there's less need for translators, historians and others to worry about whether AI will replace them -- unless human employers, enraptured by AI's hype, decide so.
"I think it is useful for people to focus on the tasks as opposed to jobs," Darrell M. West, senior fellow in the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution, told CNET. "There may not be that many whole jobs that get eliminated. There certainly are going to be a lot of tasks that are going to be eliminated."
The Microsoft research that ranked occupations by AI overlap made exactly that point, even if it wasn't the key point making headlines.
"It is tempting to conclude that occupations that have high overlap with activities AI performs will be automated and thus experience job or wage loss… This would be a mistake, as our data do not include the downstream business impacts of new technology, which are very hard to predict and often counterintuitive," the authors wrote.
Even the biggest names in generative AI will, if pushed, admit to that uncertainty. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, speaking with Theo Von in a recent podcast appearance, said not too long ago it would've been difficult to imagine that people could have the jobs of AI company CEO and podcaster. "I think it's very hard to predict exactly how something evolves or predict exactly what the jobs of the future are going to be," Altman said.
There are hazards to thinking AI can do what it really can't. Here's a look at the two jobs cited by the Microsoft report as having the most overlap with tasks AI can do: translators and historians.
Translating is more than just finding the right words
Spanish is an official language in all or part of more than 20 countries across the world. That means there are more than 20 different variations of the language -- and even more when you consider local and regional versions. Andy Benzo understands how important those distinctions can be. "I speak Argentinian," she told me. "I don't speak 'Spanish.' There's no 'Spanish.'"
As a legal translator and president-elect of the American Translators Association, Benzo has to understand not just the basic Spanish words, but the culture -- and legal culture -- behind them. Benzo, a lawyer, doesn't just change words and sentences from one language to another -- the meaning needs to be right. These translations might have serious ramifications for the people or entities involved in a legal proceeding, and it's crucial to get the exact meaning correct.
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