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- ChatGPT's web traffic has fallen for three consecutive months.
- But US businesses are still actively experimenting with generative AI in the workplace.
- It could eventually lead to AI job replacement and expanded employee monitoring.
You may have stopped asking ChatGPT random questions every day, but your employer's generative-AI journey could be just beginning. So if artificial intelligence hasn't influenced your job yet, it may be only a matter of time.
Just two months after its November launch, ChatGPT reached 100 million users, and a report by the Swiss banking giant UBS said it might be the fastest-growing consumer app ever. But the chatbot has lost momentum in recent months. August marked the third consecutive monthly decline in ChatGPT's global web traffic, and the average time spent on the platform has fallen. There's even been speculation that ChatGPT has gotten "lazier" and "dumber."
It's possible that some of ChatGPT's traffic decline was due to students being out of school for the summer. But even if Americans have indeed gotten a bit bored of ChatGPT and generative-AI technologies, one thing's for sure: Many of their bosses haven't.
In July and August, Deloitte asked 115 North American chief financial officers where their organizations were on their respective generative-AI journeys, and 42% said their companies were still experimenting with the technologies. Meanwhile, 24% said they were reading and talking about them, and 15% said their organizations had already incorporated generative AI into their business strategies. The vast majority of the chief financial officers surveyed work for US businesses that generate over $1 billion in annual revenues.
Some Americans don't expect chatbots such as ChatGPT to have a major impact on their jobs, but the Deloitte survey suggests they'll have to wait a bit longer to know for sure.
When the chief financial officers were asked how they thought generative AI could be most helpful for their organizations someday, the most popular answer was reduced costs — selected by 52% of the respondents.
In some cases, cost reduction could mean job replacement for US workers. By 2030, nearly 12 million Americans in occupations with shrinking demand may need to switch jobs, a McKinsey analysis found. AI was deemed a key reason — McKinsey estimated that 30% of hours worked in the US could be automated by 2030.
"A lot of people working on AI pretend that it's only going to be good. It's only going to be a supplement. No one is ever going to be replaced," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told The Atlantic in July. "Jobs are definitely going to go away, full stop."
Forty-five percent of the executives surveyed said they hoped to use generative AI to increase productivity. While an AI productivity boost could help some workers save time and focus on more important tasks, some organizations may start expecting workers to produce much more than they used to.
Businesses could also start using AI to keep even better tabs on their workers. In a March Resume Builder survey of 1,000 US business leaders, 96% of respondents working at organizations with a primarily remote or hybrid workforce said their firms used some form of employee-monitoring software — some of which uses AI.
Companies use this software to monitor web browsing, track keystrokes, and capture random screenshots of workers' screens. About three-quarters of respondents in the Resume Builder survey said they had fired employees based on findings from their tracking software.
Improving AI technologies could make this sort of monitoring even easier and more prevalent.
To be sure, it's plausible that the AI boom will bring plenty of positive outcomes for American workers. In addition to helping workers be more productive and spend less time on boring tasks, AI could create jobs, lead to higher wages, and even make a four-day workweek more possible.
No one, including corporate executives, knows exactly what the AI future will mean for businesses and workers across the country.