[Paper Review] How will Language Modelers like ChatGPT Affect Occupations and Industries?

E.W. Felten, Manav Raj+1 more|arXiv (Cornell University)|Mar 2, 2023

Impact of AI and Big Data on Business and Society28 citations

TL;DR

The paper develops a methodology to quantify exposure of occupations, industries, and geographies to AI language model advances, finding telemarketers and certain post-secondary teaching roles most exposed, with legal services and securities/investments as highly exposed industries, and a positive wage-exposure correlation.

ABSTRACT

Recent dramatic increases in AI language modeling capabilities has led to many questions about the effect of these technologies on the economy. In this paper we present a methodology to systematically assess the extent to which occupations, industries and geographies are exposed to advances in AI language modeling capabilities. We find that the top occupations exposed to language modeling include telemarketers and a variety of post-secondary teachers such as English language and literature, foreign language and literature, and history teachers. We find the top industries exposed to advances in language modeling are legal services and securities, commodities, and investments. We also find a positive correlation between wages and exposure to AI language modeling.

Motivation & Objective

• Develop a systematic methodology to assess exposure of occupations, industries, and geographies to language model advances.
• Identify which occupations are most exposed to AI language modeling capabilities.
• Identify which industries are most exposed to AI language modeling capabilities.
• Analyze the relationship between exposure and wage levels.

Proposed method

• Propose a methodology to quantify exposure of occupations, industries, and geographies to advances in AI language modeling capabilities.
• Apply the methodology to identify top exposed occupations and industries.
• Examine the association between exposure levels and wage outcomes.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 Which occupations are most exposed to advances in AI language modeling like ChatGPT?
• RQ2 Which industries experience the greatest exposure to language model advances?
• RQ3 Is there a relationship between exposure to language model advances and wages?
• RQ4 How do geographies compare in exposure to language model advances?

Key findings

• Top exposed occupations include telemarketers and several post-secondary teaching roles (English language and literature, foreign language and literature, and history teachers).
• Top exposed industries are legal services and securities, commodities, and investments.
• There is a positive correlation between wages and exposure to AI language modeling capabilities.