AI anxiety
The tech sector may be the canary in the coal mine for job losses caused by its own rapid development of artificial intelligence.
Like clockwork, a story seems to emerge every month or two that reignites public anxiety about the wrecking ball of artificial intelligence on jobs and labour.
Over the past week it has undoubtedly been OpenAI’s powerful new image generation system built into ChatGPT. You may have been mildly entertained when your social media feed was clogged with people generating whimsical portraits of themselves as characters in the style of famed Japanese anime house Studio Ghibli, but the launch has also raised questions about the increasing encroachment of highly accessible tools like these on a range of creative and marketing jobs.
We might not be actually seeing a truly seismic shift just yet, but there have certainly been movements. Writing for our Ideas section this week, Side Stage Ventures investor Elli Hanson described the phenomenon of early-stage startups “filling junior and even some mid-level roles with AI instead of humans”.
And VCs speaking with Bronwen Clune say they’re doing it in-house too — using AI for workflow automation, market mapping and capturing opportunities. Few would argue that VC offices are perfectly reflective of the average workforce in terms of technological adoption, but it’s certainly a canary in the coal mine.
