Benanav Talks to CNBC About AI and the Future of Work

September 18, 2023

CNBC

The generative AI tool ChatGPT was released in fall 2022 and within months, gained tens of millions of users. But people are concerned that generative AI could negatively impact professional jobs.

More than a third, 37% of adults are pessimistic about the future impact of AI on workers, according to a recent Jobs for the Future survey of 2,204 adults, and 25% believe AI will hurt their industry.

But changes in tech at work are nothing new. “Technology transforming how we work is just a story of at least the past 200 years since the industrial revolution,” says Aaron Benanav, assistant professor of sociology and senior research associate in the Autonomous Systems Policy Institute.

“I think about academics having to write grants all the time,” says Benanav, as an example. Those can be formulaic and would take far less time with the help of a machine. In programming, it’s helping engineers “write up basic outlines of code or sometimes like whole sections of code,” he says.