If you are of a certain age, you’ve heard the arguments before. Email will finish off the postal service. ATMs will eliminate the need for bank tellers. Electric cars will spell doom for auto repair shops. The most recent incarnation of this extreme viewpoint concerns Artificial Intelligence (AI) or, more specifically, ChatGPT. According to countless online pundits, ChatGPT will result in massive job losses among college educated workers.
Give me a moment to tell the local postal workers, bank tellers, and auto mechanics to expect company.
OK, I’m back. Yes, publications as august as The Atlantic are predicting that ChatGPT and like technologies will cause job market Armageddon. Guess it’s time to ditch that “dry January” resolution. Face it. You wasted your time studying. Shoulda joined that fraternity after all.
How bad is it? Apparently, high school teachers and college professors are overwhelmed with ChatGPT generated homework and papers. The latter are quaking in their tenured chairs, worried they may have to learn something new. The former are just amazed to be reading properly spelled, grammatically correct submissions for a change. As I said, it’s terrible.
Kinda reminds me of when calculators made mathematics studies obsolete, or when online courses shuttered campuses nationwide. The outlook is bad, very bad.
I’m just glad I’ve been through this before. Shortly after cubic zirconia put paid to the diamond market years ago, I stocked up. Now, I’m making a fortune selling diamond-tipped excavating tools to soon-to-be-unemployed college grads who are busy building bomb shelters. Best of all, these same customers are buying the vinyl records I hoarded when digital music bankrupted the world’s recording artists and wiped out the popular music industry.
So, what can you do if you lacked such entrepreneurial foresight? According to The Atlantic again:
“It will be important for individuals to stay up to date on the latest developments in AI and to consider how their skills and expertise can be leveraged in a world where machines are increasingly able to perform many tasks.”
There you have it. ChatGPT? No problem. You just need to be more leveraged . . . like your balance sheet will be after you lose your job to AI.
Peter has spent the past twenty-plus years as an acting/consulting CFO for a number of small businesses in a wide range of industries. Peter’s prior experience is that of a serial entrepreneur, managing various start-up and turnaround projects. He is a co-founder of Keurig.
