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A white paper written by analysts at the investment bank Goldman Sachs estimates, based on data from the United States and the European Union, that a quarter of all global work could be replaced by AI tools.20 In addition, 300 million jobs worldwide could be exposed to automation, meaning part of that job could be replaced. Their methodology, however, does not inspire confidence: they rated each job task from 1 to 7 in difficulty, and simply assumed that if the task had a score of 4 and lower, that it could be automated away. Task difficulties of score 2 include “Check to see if baking bread is done” and “Interpret a blood pressure reading;” tasks of difficulty of score 4 include “Test electrical circuits” and “Complete tax forms for a small business.” In other words, they ask us to appreciate the promise of replacing bakers, nurses, electricians, and accountants with text synthesis machines. Only one of these jobs centrally involves writing text, but surely we’ll all be happy with random errors in our taxes, right?
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Emily M. Bender (The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want)