AI對大學畢業生找工作影響漸顯

https://www.wsj.com/economy/jobs/ai-entry-level-job-impact-5c687c84?st=UqMFGe&reflink=article_copyURL_share

 

Younger workers see rising competition in fields like software coding, translators

BY JUSTIN LAHART

Artificial intelligence is profoundly limiting some young Americans’ employment prospects, new research shows.

Young workers are getting hit in fields where generative-AI tools such as ChatGPT can most easily automate tasks done by humans, such as software development, according to a paper released Tuesday by three Stanford University economists. They crunched anonymized data on millions of employees at tens of thousands of companies, including detailed information on workers’ ages and jobs, making this one of clearest indicators yet of AI’s disruptive impact.

“There’s a clear, evident change when you specifically look at young workers who are highly exposed to AI,” said Stanford economist Erik Brynjolfsson, who conducted the research with Bharat Chandar and Ruyu Chen.

At the same time, the economists found evidence that in fields where AI can help people in their work, rather than replace them, employment among young people is improving.

The work—which hasn’t been peer reviewed or published yet—helps answer a question that has been burning since OpenAIintroduced Chat-GPT in November 2022. Subsequent versions, and similar generative-AI tools from competitors such as Google-parent Alphabet, have only heightened worries the technology will make some jobs obsolete.

While anecdotal evidence has emerged showing AI’s effects on certain professions, such as software coding, there has been little harder evidence that the technology was significantly weighing on the labor market.

One problem: ChatGPT rolled out during a period when the Federal Reserve was curbing economic growth by sharply raising interest rates, and job growth was moderating from the pandemic-related hiring surge. The new research helps tease out the AI impact from those other factors.

Using records from paycheck processor ADP, the economists were able to get a granular view of how generative AI has affected the labor market. The data includes detailed information on workers’ ages and occupations, making it far more comprehensive than the survey of households the Labor Department uses for its monthly employment report.

The Stanford economists first looked at areas where AI can automate many of the tasks workers perform, and therefore potentially replace them. Those include jobs such as software developers, receptionists, translators and customer service representatives.

Their finding: Overall employment in those categories has softened since late 2022 relative to other occupations, with the weakness concentrated among younger workers.

“After late 2022 and early 2023 you start seeing that their employment has really gone in a different direction than other workers,” Brynjolfs--son said.

Among software developers aged 22 to 25, for example, the head count was nearly 20% lower this July versus its late 2022 peak. These are daunting obstacles for the large number of students earning bachelor’s degrees in computer science in recent years.

For workers aged 26 to 30, --head count was close to flat, but among older workers, head count continued to grow.

Other factors could be hitting those computer-science jobs, including a general slump in employment at technology companies or pandemic-related education disruptions. But the data suggest such possibilities can’t explain away the AI effect on other types of jobs. Head counts among customer service representatives—a category that, unlike software development, generally doesn’t require a college education— followed a similar pattern.

The economists were also able to rule out other factors that might skew the data, such as the interest-rate sensitivity of different businesses, or some occupations being more susceptible to remote work and outsourcing.

Harder-to-automate skills older workers picked up during their careers might be insulating them from the same kind of AI hit. A senior software developer, for example, might have learned how to work collaboratively with noncoders and deliver the product the company needs. Such skills remain highly valued to employers and may never be automated away.

This raises a potential labor- market paradox: If the only way to develop that knowledge is to put in time doing work that AI has largely automated away, who will replace today’s experts when they retire? Addressing that might require rethinking how young workers learn on the job.

“I think that we’ll have to more explicitly train people, as opposed to just hoping that they will figure these things out on their own,” said Brynjolfsson.

While much of the focus on generative AI and the labor market has been on which jobs the technology might replace, AI could also help some workers do their jobs better. AI might help medical professionals make accurate diagnoses more quickly, for example.

Young workers in occupations where researchers have found AI could act as a helper, rather than a replacement, actually saw employment growth that exceeded overall employment, the economists found. That wasn’t enough to offset the weakness in occupations where AI automates tasks workers do, but it does raise the hope that AI could be harnessed to augment workers’ skills, ultimately helping them do their jobs better and making them better off as a result.

Simply automating tasks that people do can save money, but it doesn’t really create anything new, said Brynjolfsson. What’s more valuable is doing new things that extend people’s capabilities, leading to gains that encourage businesses to hire more, rather than fewer, people.

“I was delighted to see in the data that indeed, this augmentation approach could benefit people and lead to more employment,” he said.