For all the talk of ChatGPT and its ilk representing a turning point in the world of work, few Americans think chatbots will have much of an impact on their jobs. New Pew research suggests only 24% of U.S. adults have even heard of ChatGPT, and just 19% of those people think their own roles face upheaval in the coming years.
That’s not to say people who have heard of OpenAI’s large language model don’t think it will have an impact—the research, conducted in late July, shows more than half of them see big changes coming for software engineers, graphic designers, and <covers eyes> journalists. They just don’t tend to think they’ll be so heavily affected themselves anytime soon, with 36% predicting a minor impact in the next couple decades, and 27% foreseeing no impact at all.
These people may or may not be right, but there’s certainly no lull in the push to insert chatbots into everyday work life. OpenAI yesterday announced ChatGPT Enterprise, putting itself into competition with the swelling portfolio of ChatGPT-based enterprise offerings of the company’s big partner/patron, Microsoft.
The benefits over standard ChatGPT are debatable—the most notable difference seems to be that ChatGPT Enterprise defaults away from allowing the model to use conversations as training fodder—but nonetheless, OpenAI claims business leaders are clamoring to use the chatbot, with over 80% of Fortune 500 companies already adopting it to some degree.
Google also announced a host of new enterprise A.I. features at its Cloud Next event today, citing benefits for big customers like L’Oréal and GM. The announcements affect everything from Meet and Chat to Gmail and Docs, so that’s surely going to have a significant impact on a lot of workers.
Meanwhile, Pew also reported yesterday that Americans are increasingly more concerned than excited about A.I.’s growing role in daily life. Last December, 38% said they felt that way—pretty much in line with the year before—but in a survey conducted in late July and early August, the proportion had risen to 52%.
As I wrote before, regarding a Reuters/Ipsos survey a few months back, one can expect A.I. fears to grow when experts keep saying how dangerous the technology is. But that doesn’t mean such fears should be discounted, and the details in Pew’s research are interesting—respondents tended to feel more positive than negative about A.I.’s role in product and service recommendations, tracking personal health, and making vehicles safer, but they’re really fretting about A.I.’s privacy impact.
Lawmakers are sensitive to these concerns, and Democratic New York Sen. Chuck Schumer just announced a series of congressional “A.I. insight forums” that are supposed to inform future regulations. The first is scheduled for Sept. 13, and it promises to be quite an event, featuring Tesla/X.ai’s Elon Musk, Alphabet's Sundar Pichai, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, plus civil rights and labor and creative-industries folks—and also Eric Schmidt, the military-industrial complex cheerleader and former Google CEO.
Sadly, this star-studded affair will take place behind closed doors, but I’m sure it will make a heck of a movie one day—it’s even expected to last for two to three hours, so the production could be a real-time nailbiter. More news below.
Want to send thoughts or suggestions to Data Sheet? Drop a line here.
David Meyer
