"To conduct our study, we analyzed 1,388,711 job posts from a leading global online freelancing platform from July 2021 to July 2023. Online freelancing platforms provide a good setting for examining emerging trends due to the digital, task-oriented, and flexible nature of work on these platforms. We focus our analysis on the introduction of two types of gen AI tools: ChatGPT and image-generating AI. Specifically, we wanted to understand whether the introduction and diffusion of these tools decreased demand for jobs on this platform and, if so, which types of jobs and skills are affected most and by how much.
Using a machine learning algorithm, we first grouped job posts into different categories based on their detailed job descriptions. These categories were then classified into three types: manual-intensive jobs (e.g., data and office management, video services, and audio services), automation-prone jobs (e.g., writing; software, app, and web development; engineering), and image-generating jobs (e.g., graphic design and 3D modeling). We then examined the impact that the introduction of Gen AI tools had on demand across these different types of jobs.
We find that the introduction of ChatGPT and image-generating tools led to nearly immediate decreases in posts for online gig workers across job types, but particularly for automation-prone jobs. After the introduction of ChatGPT, there was a 21% decrease in the weekly number of posts in automation-prone jobs compared to manual-intensive jobs. Writing jobs were affected the most (30.37% decrease), followed by software, app, and web development (20.62%) and engineering (10.42%).
A similar magnitude of decline in demand was observed after the introduction of popular image-generating AI tools (including Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and DALL-E 2) were introduced."
https://hbr.org/2024/11/research-how-gen-ai-is-already-impacting-the-labor-market
#AI #GenerativeAI #Automation #Unemployment #Freelancing #GigEconomy