Is AI Becoming a Hidden Concern? No Worker Can Escape AI
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If we were to select the most fascinating new technology of 2023, ChatGPT would undoubtedly top the list. From Silicon Valley and Wall Street in the U.S. to China's Houchang Village and Zhongguancun, almost all major tech companies are discussing 'generative AI.' Following ChatGPT, new generative AI products have emerged almost every week, including models like Wenxin Yiyan, Tongyi Qianwen, Gemini, and niche applications such as Midjourney, Miaoya Camera, HeyGen, Pika, which have skyrocketed overnight...
No one dares to ignore this technology. Zhang Yong, then Chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group, stated at this year's Alibaba Cloud Summit that all industries are worth redoing based on artificial intelligence technology. In May of this year, Baidu CEO Robin Li expressed his view that 'large models are about to change the world' and 'Baidu will redo all its products with large models.' Internet giants like Tencent, ByteDance, Kuaishou, Didi, and Pinduoduo have also followed suit in AI business.
Technological progress often drives innovation in productivity tools. On one hand, AI has spawned new professions such as AIGC artists and prompt engineers, attracting attention due to high demand and lucrative salaries. According to data from Liepin, the demand for AI talent is nearly three times that of five years ago, while the overall internet industry has seen only a 1.06-fold increase. From January to August 2023, job postings related to AIGC (AI-generated content) surged by 139.76% year-over-year.
On the other hand, the rise of AI has also sparked anxiety among workers about job displacement. Unwilling to be replaced, many invest heavily in AI courses to upskill. However, some who fail to keep up have already seen their jobs taken over by AI.
Every new technology comes with dual implications, and the current AI boom is no exception. No one can halt technological progress. For ordinary individuals, AI represents both an opportunity for personal growth and a potential threat to their livelihoods. The key lies in learning how to harness this technology effectively rather than being replaced by it.
He Lihua’s income tripled overnight, jumping from 10,000 to 30,000 yuan per month—something he, a graduate of an ordinary undergraduate program, never dared to imagine.
His major was artificial intelligence, and when he first chose this field, He Lihua was very worried. Compared to majors like computer science and software engineering, AI lacked a broader job market. Even if there were job opportunities, AI companies typically required graduates from top-tier universities like 985 or 211, setting a high entry barrier. As a result, after graduation, he chose to prioritize stability and supporting himself first.
The turning point came at the end of last year. In November 2022, OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT attracted 1 million registered users in just five days, becoming one of the fastest-growing products in history. OpenAI quickly became the world's most valuable startup, and AIGC (AI-generated content) exploded globally.
This gave He Lihua hope. He felt that AI entrepreneurship in China was still in its early stages, and joining the right AI company might offer broader prospects.
Currently, He Lihua works as an AI trainer, a role that demands higher technical skills compared to basic AI annotators who only need computer literacy. His responsibilities include collecting data from various sources, preprocessing and cleaning the data, as well as developing and debugging models.
AI trainers are a new profession emerging alongside the development of AI, along with other highly specialized roles such as prompt engineers. For example, Baidu's large model data annotation base in Hainan requires applicants to hold at least a bachelor's degree. Of course, AI has also created new jobs accessible to the general public, such as AI illustrators and AI narrators.
It turns out his choice was correct.
Rarely has a technology excited nearly all major internet companies worldwide. In late 2022, ByteDance recalled Zhu Wenjia, the technical lead of TikTok, to internally launch a conversational AI project codenamed "O." Two months after ChatGPT's release, Baidu, which had been betting on AI for years, announced at the Creat AI Developer Conference that it would accelerate the integration of AIGC with search to enhance the search experience.
The wave of AIGC is surging. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates firmly believes "this is the most revolutionary opportunity in 40 years"; NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang exclaimed "the iPhone moment of AI has arrived"; 360 Group CEO Zhou Hongyi declared that AI large models represent an industrial revolution-level productivity. Baidu CEO Robin Li stated, "We are at a new starting point—an era of AI centered on large models. Large models have transformed AI and will change the world."
Super internet companies are flocking to the scene. In March this year, Baidu took the lead by launching ERNIE Bot, followed by Alibaba, iFlytek, 360, Huawei, JD.com, and SenseTime. According to data from the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology, by October 2023, the number of publicly announced large models in China alone had reached 238.
Major players are all striving to develop general-purpose large models. Just as there were two dominant operating systems in the mobile era, they hope their models can foster thriving ecosystems. Whoever can release the best general-purpose large model fastest stands a greater chance of becoming the foundational 'operating system'.
They want to be evaluated as soon as possible. Thus, models like Baidu's ERNIE Bot, ByteDance's Skylark, and Alibaba's Tongyi Qianwen have emerged one after another.
Benefiting from these large model products, some people have already started using these tools to create new income streams. Novelist Lin Tong is one such example. She realized AI might replace human labor in generating novels, so she shifted from traditional writing methods and began using ERNIE Bot for her work.
"Every day, I need to come up with a story background and then break it down into minute details. The more detailed the breakdown, the more comprehensive and realistic the AI-generated text will be. If the questions are too broad, the feedback will be hollow and fail to captivate the audience," Lin Tong shared with Tech Planet.
Lin Tong mentioned that unlike online content-spinning software or platforms, articles created by AI tools are more unique. Therefore, publishing "original" stories on web novel platforms or other creative writing platforms can earn platform incentive bonuses.
Lin Tong stated that short stories in genres like romance, suspense, and situational fiction created with AI tools can indeed be captivating. One of her romance articles even garnered over 30,000 views on WeChat Official Account, making it one of her best recent works. Currently, her daily earnings are estimated to be around 200 to 300 yuan.
However, risks are not uncommon. In November this year, the first AI copyright case was adjudicated, resulting in a compensation of 500 yuan. The case originated when the plaintiff used the open-source software Stable Diffusion to generate an image by inputting prompts and later posted it on Xiaohongshu under the title "Spring Breeze Brings Tenderness." The plaintiff later discovered that a Baijiahao account used the image in an article without permission and removed the watermark attributing the plaintiff's Xiaohongshu account. Consequently, the plaintiff sued the defendant.
Lin Tong also told Tech Planet that while tools can improve work efficiency, they may also cause trouble and risks. A friend of his relied on an AI tool to write stories but was later flagged by the platform for plagiarism. It turned out the online AI tool had simply rehashed someone else's story.
In May of this year, tech giant IBM announced a pause in hiring for positions that AI could handle. Earlier, companies like Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon had already halted recruitment for certain AI-related roles, stating their intention to align hiring plans with AI advancements.
The reason is that AI's applications—ranging from automated customer service and text generation to graphic design and code writing—are becoming increasingly widespread. IBM CEO Arvind Krishna noted in a media interview, 'I can easily see 30% of these jobs being replaced by AI and automation over the next five years.'
Krishna's statement is no exaggeration. In China, some roles are already being—or will soon be—replaced by AI.
Li Kuo's situation is not optimistic. As a product programmer at a major tech company who has participated in the development of several excellent software and applications, he increasingly feels his job is at risk due to the rapid advancement of AI technology. To improve coding efficiency, his team leader has started requiring them to use AI code generators for low-to-medium complexity code. This technological shift has brought the 'age 35 crisis' forward.
AIGC can complete automated programming tasks by analyzing large amounts of data and patterns, thereby reducing the workload of manual coding. For example, what previously required manually writing complex algorithms to process data can now be automatically accomplished using an AI code generator.
Li Kuo told Tech Planet that the process of being replaced by AI code generators happened gradually. Initially, AI code generators only assisted him with basic coding tasks like code completion and error checking. Now, they've begun handling more complex programming work such as automatic code generation and algorithm optimization. Slowly, tasks once thought to be exclusively human domains are being performed well by AI code generators - sometimes even better than humans.
The technological progress has shocked Li Kuo. Projects that previously required several consecutive days of work can now be completed by AI code generators in just a few hours. While AI hasn't completely replaced all his work yet, Li Kuo acknowledges that this sense of crisis is very real as portions of his job are indeed being taken over by AI.
Not everyone is as lucky as Li Kuo. Shi Wei originally worked as a content editor at an internet startup. For Shi Wei, this job was initially filled with hope—he could write and edit various types of content, share information with readers, collaborate with authors and experts from different fields, and build an interesting and insightful online platform.
Shi Wei pointed out that content editing is a job highly susceptible to being replaced by AI. More and more generative AI tools are being applied in his industry. These tools can use natural language processing and machine learning technologies to produce high-quality content, almost matching the level of human editors. They can automatically search and organize information, analyze and summarize data, and even participate in editing and proofreading. The company has already started using AI tools like Baidu's ERNIE for content-related editing tasks.
Shi Wei began to worry: if AI tools can complete most editing tasks in a short time, is there still a need for his job? But time waits for no one. A few months later, the company ultimately hired a group of people skilled in using AI tools to handle content editing in order to cut costs. His job was replaced by AI editing tools, and he eventually chose to resign. The reason for leaving was simple: AI tools stripped the job of its creativity, turning him into just another cog in the assembly line.
Since August this year, domestic tech companies and research institutions like Baidu, SenseTime, and iFlytek have filed for record under the 'Interim Measures for the Management of Generative Artificial Intelligence Services' and officially opened their self-developed large AI models to the public. This marks the transition of domestic large models from small-scale internal testing to large-scale application, while also addressing the hidden concerns brought by the unchecked growth of early-stage large model products through regulation and standardization.
The process of AI replacing human labor is accelerating. On November 7, OpenAI's first developer conference ignited excitement around AI Agents. OpenAI has released GPTs, the initial form of AI Agent products, along with the GPT Builder tool for creating them.
On November 13, 2023, Microsoft founder Bill Gates wrote a lengthy blog post about Agents, stating they would disrupt the software industry and human-computer interaction: "Whoever masters the personal assistant Agent will achieve something significant. Because you'll never need to visit search engines, productivity websites, or even Amazon again."
Users can simply chat with GPT Builder, describe the desired GPT functionality, and generate their own customized GPT. These personalized GPTs can be more applicable to daily life, specific tasks, work, or home use. To facilitate this, OpenAI has released numerous new APIs (including vision, DALL·E3 image generation, and speech) and the new Assistants API, making it easier for developers to create their own GPTs.
This means everyone will have their own personal assistant, significantly improving the efficiency of human production and lifestyle. In the future, humans may not just be freeing their hands but could potentially possess true digital counterparts.
Just a few days ago, Google released its latest artificial intelligence model, Gemini, which tackled a series of complex issues, including logical fallacies, everyday moral dilemmas, medical questions, and tests in economics and geography. For the first time, AI outperformed humans, shocking the industry.
Google stated that Gemini can solve homework problems, process real-time video, and handle a wide range of tasks. This means Gemini is not only the most powerful but also the most versatile, capable of adapting to various tasks, including replacing human jobs.
For those who have not yet adapted to AI or whose jobs are highly replaceable by AI, this technology is becoming a growing concern.
Over 200 years ago, Watt's improved steam engine increased efficiency threefold, accelerating humanity's transition into the industrial age and significantly boosting textile production. More than 100 years ago, German inventor Otto created the world's first internal combustion engine, leading to the advent of trains and cars, rapidly expanding human mobility. When used wisely, technological advancements always bring benefits to society.
As Robin Li said, "While some job opportunities have disappeared, more have emerged. The improvement in people's work efficiency can support more individuals, and everyone's life has become better than before."
AI-related job positions have not only increased in number but also seen a rise in salaries. According to the 2023 AIGC Talent Trends Report by Maimai High-Tech Talent Think Tank, with the leapfrog development in the AIGC field, AIGC talent has attracted significant attention, and salaries have reached new heights. Industry giants in internet, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and enterprise digital services are competing fiercely to attract talent with high salaries, with well-known headhunting firms offering monthly salaries of up to 100,000 yuan. Mid-to-high-end AIGC talent has become a "must-have" for companies.
Moreover, unlike the internet industry, AI talent is not constrained by the "35-year-old crisis." The report indicates that nearly 70% of AIGC professionals are over 30 years old, with more than 34.5% above 35—6% higher than the internet industry.
The AIGC industry typically places greater emphasis on technology and innovation rather than age and years of experience. For ordinary individuals, the AI industry is more inclusive in terms of age.
Additionally, Li Shikang, an HR professional from a leading internet company, summarized to Tech Planet that while internet giants are currently intensifying their recruitment of AI talent, they are also committed to helping existing employees without AI knowledge to adapt to working with AI and improve work efficiency.
History has repeatedly shown that technological changes bring growing pains, but each revolution elevates human life to new dimensions. In this wave of AI technology, rather than fearing it, embracing it proactively is more beneficial. Among numerous emerging trends, AI presents a promising new development direction for ordinary people.