AI is not coming for your job — yet, Yale study finds

SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — Is AI coming for your job? Not yet apparently. Those, at least, are the findings of a recent study from the Yale Budget Lab.

The study, “Evaluating the Impact of AI on the Labor Market: Current State of Affairs,” examined how U.S. employment has changed since Chat GPT was released almost three years ago, in November 2022.

Despite fears of an “AI-pocalypse” hitting the job market, generative artificial intelligence is not putting people out of work in any meaningful way, according to the academic study.

The study conceded there was “widespread public anxiety” about AI disrupting the job market. However, overall, researchers said, “our metrics indicate that the broader labor market has not experienced a discernible disruption since ChatGPT’s release 33 months ago.”

This, researchers added, undercuts “fears that AI automation is currently eroding the demand for cognitive labor across the economy.” The study examined official data from the labor market as well as tech industry figures on AI adaption and usage.

“While anxiety over the effects of AI on today’s labor market is widespread, our data suggests it remains largely speculative,” researchers concluded. “The picture of AI’s impact on the labor market that emerges from our data is one that largely reflects stability, not major disruption at an economy-wide level.”

However, the study admitted its findings were not predictive of the future impact AI could have, noting that “widespread technological disruption in the workplace tends to occur over decades, rather than months or years.”

“Even if new AI technologies will go on to impact the labor market as much, or more, dramatically, it is reasonable to expect that widespread effects will take longer than 33 months to materialize.”