Rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) have scientists, journalists, business leaders, policymakers, and other observers scrambling to take stock of the implications of this revolutionary technology. One of the biggest concerns is the potential impact on the labor market. People are afraid of losing their jobs to a technology that has the potential to be vastly superior to human intellect in terms of speed, efficiency, and overall intelligence.
Skills AI Is Likely to Replace
While many observers assume low-skilled positions like gas station attendants, grocery store cashiers, and call center workers will see the greatest amount of skills displacement, AI actually has the potential to displace even highly educated and specialized human workers.
For instance, earlier this year, CNN reported that AI-powered mammogram screening improved cancer detection by 20% compared with human doctors. The implications of faster, cheaper, and more effective breast cancer screening for America’s notoriously expensive and inefficient healthcare system are appealing—unless you’re a doctor, of course.
Could AI Replace Attorneys?
Now, it seems as though attorneys could be the next class of highly educated and highly paid professionals at risk of losing jobs to AI. As Sean McManus reports in an article for BBC Worklife, Luminance, an AI company that specializes in developing solutions for the legal profession, is in the process of rolling out a beta version of its Luminance Autopilot application. As the name suggests, Luminance Autopilot is designed to fully automate the often lengthy process of contract review. This is a step up from its previous copilot version that assisted human attorneys in conducting reviews.
“The Luminance system is built on a large language model (LLM), which is also the foundation of popular text generation tool ChatGPT,” says McManus. “The major difference is that Luminance’s tools have been trained using more than 150 million legal documents, instead of public internet content. Luminance users create knowledge banks containing their signed documents, so that the software can learn what contract terms the company usually agrees to.”
Time Will Tell
It’s important to note that this technology is still in its early stages, and for the time being, most companies will still need to rely on human lawyers for their contract drafting and negotiation needs, perhaps with the assistance of tools that fall into the copilot category. However, the use of AI in fields like medicine and law demonstrates this technology’s potential to displace workers in even the most specialized fields of the global economy.
These developments are important to monitor as organizations consider the steps they may need to take to reskill or upskill their employees for other roles. The robots are coming!
Lin Grensing-Pophal is a Contributing Editor at HR Daily Advisor.