Let’s go down memory lane – the telephone was invented in 1876, the computer in 1937, and the internet and laptop both in 1974. What we are looking at here is the progress of innovation happening faster in history. The rapid pace of technological advancements is reshaping the world as we know it, potentially revolutionizing entire industries.
One such technology is ChatGPT, a large language model recently developed by OpenAI that has been the talk of the town lately. Built with the ability to understand and generate human-like languages, ChatGPT is having a significant impact on the software industry and its workforce, bringing both benefits and challenges in its wake. Similar to the rise of smartphones and the internet, ChatGPT is poised to change the way we interact with technologies and each other, making it an important topic to understand and consider.
Here are some positive impacts that ChatGPT can potentially bring to the software industry and workforce:
- Improved Customer Service: Companies are able to provide instant and personalized customer service as the bot could crawl even more knowledge than your regular customer service personnel from the internet, while working 24/7. This may result in increased customer satisfaction and loyalty. For example, a ChatGPT-powered chatbot on a company website can provide 24/7 support to customers, answering their questions and resolving their issues more accurately.
- Increased Efficiency: ChatGPT can automate simple routine tasks, allowing human resources to focus on more complex, creative and (ultimately) more meaningful work. Systematically, this improves productivity and efficiency of a company. For example, a software development process integrates ChatGPT to generate code snippets, freeing up its developers’ time to focus on higher-level and complex coding tasks.
However, we shouldn’t be forgetting that there are also some negative impacts to the above mentioned:
- Job Losses: ChatGPT may replace career positions in certain industries, inevitably leading to unemployment. A call center service that relies on human operators may be replaced with ChatGPT-powered chatbots as it may provide more effective results while costing lesser expenses.
- Decreased Job Satisfaction and motivation: As ChatGPT takes over some of the tasks we previously performed, we may lose some level of satisfaction and motivation we gained from these tasks. For example, a software developer who was previously responsible for writing code from scratch may feel demotivated when ChatGPT takes over the task of generating snippets, as he perceives himself to be easily replaced (link back to point 1) and less valuable to a company.
Being replaced by the things we created can’t get scarier. Many technological advancements have replaced jobs in the past, and the only way to overcome this is by staying competitive in the face of increasing automation or analytics. Individuals can upskill and re-skill in areas where ChatGPT and other AI technologies are less advanced (or unable to fully replace), such as interpersonal skills, creativity, and critical thinking. These skills will always be relevant as they encapsulate the very core of being human; something a robot is unable to replicate (or at least will take a long, long time.)
