The employment of digital freelancers in writing and coding was found to have declined by 21% since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, according to a cross-sectional study conducted by Imperial College Business School in cooperation with Harvard Business School and the German Institute for Economic Research. Therefore, it is reasonable that many employees, including those in the creative sectors, worry about being displaced by AI and new research reveals that these worries could be warranted.
ChatGPT behind the loss of freelance workers?
Freelance writing, software, and application development went down by 21 percent, and data entry, and social media management by 13 percent. Freelance work like image generation including graphic designing and 3D modeling was trimmed down to 17%. Focusing on Google search trends, then the decline was higher in the sectors that were aware of generative AI and could use it. It partitioned jobs into automatability, manual, and image production. The study indicated that there was an inverse relationship in the number of job advertisements in these fields after the introduction of ChatGPT.
The robot-employment rate decreased for data entry and social media post-production jobs by 13 percent and for image generation jobs, which include graphic design, 3D modeling, etc., by 17 percent.
Dr Xinrong Zhu, Assistant Professor of Marketing at Imperial College Business School and co-author of the research stated, “Despite being relatively new, ChatGPT has already significantly influenced the workplace. Many organizations seem to be moving away from freelancers towards generative AI, but it remains to be seen if they are satisfied with AI’s quality compared to human freelancers and if this shift will persist.”
Will ChatGPT destroy jobs?
AI is a threat to digital freelancers and this is expected to increase since the advancement in AI technologies is on the rise. However, there are measures one can take to safeguard his/her career.
These include diversifying the skill sets and concentrating on the areas that require human input, creativity, or emotions. Other skills such as strategic thinking, problem-solving, and writing intricate content still apply, and AI does not take over fully.
Furthermore, being proactive and adopting AI tools as productivity and work quality boosters changes threats into opportunities. It is important to adapt to the change as it is clear that AI is here to stay. Through these changes, AI skills can be adapted and incorporated hence making a candidate relevant in the marketplace.