Some employees are worried AI will replace them.
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A copywriter, laid off without explanation, says ChatGPT replaced her role. She is now a dog walker.
She told The Washington Post that her work assignments dried up after the chatbot launched.
AI-powered products are causing concern among employees who worry the new tech will replace them.
A copywriter, who was let go by her company without an explanation, says she was replaced by ChatGPT, The Washington Post reported.
25-year-old Olivia Lipkin, who is based in San Francisco, was laid off from a tech startup in April, per The Post. She told the news outlet that her work assignments had been declining since the chatbot was made available to the public and her managers had started referring to her as “Olivia/ChatGPT” on Slack.
After she was laid off, she saw managers writing about how using the technology was cheaper than paying a full-time writer, per The Post. She said the AI-powered chatbot, which can produce convincing human-like text in minutes, made her feel “insecure” and “anxious” about being replaced since it was released in November.
She said: “Now I actually had proof that it was true, that those anxieties were warranted and now I was actually out of a job because of AI.”
Lipkin now has a job as a dog walker.
“I’m totally taking a break from the office world,” she told The Post. “People are looking for the cheapest solution, and that’s not a person — that’s a robot.”
The flood of new AI-powered products is causing concern among employees who worry the new tech will replace them.
Some CEOs have already signaled they are planning to leverage the new tech to reduce costs. Arvind Krishna, the CEO of IBM, said in May that the company would slow or suspend hiring for roles that AI might replace, estimating that 7,800 jobs could be impacted.
The bot’s ability to produce impressive written work at scale has worried commercial writers for some time. In January, just two months after OpenAI released ChatGPT, a freelance writer said he was horrified to see the chatbot could knock together a nearly-finished marketing article in just 30 seconds.
However, the technology is not without flaws and has shown a tendency to confidently present false information as true, causing concern that it could contribute to the spread of misinformation.