ChatGPT takeover: IBM CEO thinks AI taking white-collar jobs is a 'good thing'

The rise of AI tools like ChatGPT has gotten the world worried about the tech takeover. However, the chief executive of tech giant IBM, Arvind Krishna thinks that's a good thing as it would take over "clerical white-collar work"

Krishna, in an interview with the British newspaper, Financial Times explained, "In fields like customer service, human resources and positions within finance and health care could all see automation - not years from now but in the current day."

He then explained that health care and finance, it is the "regulatory work" that wouldn't be done by people. "A big chunk of that could get automated using these techniques," he told FT.

The IBM chief also stated that further out, AI will likely be capable of managing "things in like drug discovery or in trying to finish up chemistry".

"I think [AI's practical use] is here and now," he said, adding, "We do have a shortage of labour in the real world and that's because of a demographic issue that the world is facing... the United States is now sitting at 3.4% unemployment, the lowest in 60 years. So maybe we can find tools that replace some portions of labour, and it's a good thing this time".

Krishna also said that AI taking over customer service could also get clients a "much better answer at maybe around half the current cost. Over time, it can get even lower than half, but it can take half out pretty quickly".

"There are hundreds of such processes inside every enterprise, so I do think clerical white-collar work is going to be able to be replaced by this," he added.

Meanwhile, the success of ChatGPT has been keeping the tech giants on their toes. Microsoft has been working to challenge Google's dominance in the search engine space by investing in its own search engine, Bing, and incorporating AI technologies into the search experience. Microsft is also a key investor in OpenAI which developed ChatGPT, an AI-powered conversational model. It is a variant of the GPT (Generative Pretrained Transformer) language model.

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