The Looming Job Crisis: Millions to be Displaced by Chat GBT

Short answer: “Chat GBT” is a common misspelling of ChatGPT, the AI chatbot made by OpenAI. You can use it at chatgpt.com. This article, first written in 2023, looks at what tools like it mean for customer support jobs and which skills still matter.

ChatGPT (the name stands for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) is changing customer service by automating chat conversations. Many people worry it will also cost jobs. Lots of them.

Some industry forecasts have claimed that AI chatbots could take over as many as 25% of customer service and support jobs within a decade. Estimates like that vary widely. Nobody can prove them yet. Still, even a fraction of that would mean millions of affected workers, and the effects would spread well beyond call centers.

Companies have already started using chatbots to handle routine customer questions. Some have cut or frozen hiring for frontline support roles as a result. As the tools get better at handling complicated requests, that pressure will grow.

The concern is not limited to customer service. Writing, translation and basic coding tasks are also exposed, and the more businesses adopt these tools, the more roles change. A fast shift could push up unemployment in some fields and ripple through local economies.

Faster, cheaper service has real appeal. The cost to workers is just as real. Companies and policymakers will need to plan for it, for example through retraining programs or financial help for people moving into new kinds of work.

Workers can prepare. Support staff who learn to work alongside AI tools, handling the escalations and judgment calls the chatbot cannot, will be in a better spot. Not every role disappears. Many change. People who can set up, monitor and fix these systems will also be in demand.

So where does that leave workers? How large that effect turns out to be is still an open question. It depends on how fast companies adopt the technology and how well employers and governments help people adjust.

John King, CISSP, PMP, CISM

John King currently works in the greater Los Angeles area as a ISSO (Information Systems Security Officer). John has a passion for learning and developing his cyber security skills through education, hands on work, and studying for IT certifications.