With the arrival of ChatGPT (and others), workers are getting worried. According to predictions, these AI-driven technologies will replace most white-collar jobs: roles many people spent their youths training for.
Technology Will Help You Earn More: But is That Likely?
Well, it depends on who you ask. Technology has progressed rapidly for over seventy years, yet we don’t see widespread unemployment. In fact, more jobs are available today than in the past. And these tend to augment labor productivity.
Technology is an influential tool people can use to earn more money, according to a tech startup founder, Zarif Haque. He says, for instance, that gig economy drivers can increase their daily and weekly earnings using an app he and his colleagues developed to route them more efficiently.
That’s not the only example, though. The software also “eats” many mundane tasks, freeing white-collar workers to perform higher-skilled activities. Accountants, for instance, no longer need to crunch numbers themselves. Instead, they can spend more time consulting clients, offering them a higher-quality service.
More broadly, technology is also helping people earn more in other ways. For instance, you no longer need to spend thousands of dollars and stay in university accommodations to obtain professional skills. Instead, you can get courses and coaches online.
You can also start freelancing on the side, selling your existing skills via platforms like Upwork and Fiverr. These make generating additional income in the evenings or on weekends easy.
You can also use technology to improve your investing and trading. Fintech firms are developing AIs that track the markets and make recommendations based on your preferred trading style. These take a lot of the guesswork out of generating high returns.
Technology is also making it much easier to start investing in the first place. You no longer need to go to a broker. Instead, you fire up an app, transfer money from your bank account, and that’s it.
Workers don’t need to fear technology
The basic argument here is that workers don’t need to fear technology. Instead, embracing it could make them more productive and help to increase their income. In the coming years, the price of essential commodities, like food and fuel, will likely increase.
Therefore, people need to be as productive as possible to offset some of the negative impacts of rising bills. Living standards will only increase if individuals can use tools to make themselves more productive per hour.
Technology is the only solution to the problem at the economic level. People are much more likely to succeed if they can leverage new AIs as they come down the pike instead of fearing them. Once that dynamic changes, the true nature of the opportunity will reveal itself.
Technology will help earn more
With that said, new technologies have the potential to progress more rapidly than entrepreneurs can keep up with them. Therefore, there could come the point where technology is destroying jobs faster than the economy can create them, leading to genuine structural unemployment.
