US experts warn AI likely to kill off jobs – and widen wealth inequality

New technologies like AI often produce jobs that no one could predict – before the invention of computers, who would have foreseen the job of computer programmer? Photograph: Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock

ChatGPT is just the latest technology to fuel worries that it will wipe out the jobs of millions of workers, whether advertising copywriters, Wall Street traders, salespeople, writers of basic computer code or journalists.

But while many workforce experts say the fears that ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence (AI) technologies will cause unemployment to skyrocket are overblown, they point to another fear about AI: that it will widen the US’s already huge income and wealth inequality by creating a new wave of billionaire tech barons at the same time that it pushes many workers out of better paid jobs.