The revelation that some Kiwi businesses are already using ChatGPT has raised the issue of how educators will prepare younger generations for a workforce they may be ousted from.

Goldman Sachs economists predicted in a
report last month that 18 per cent – as many as 300 million – full-time jobs globally could be computerised with white-collar workers considered more at risk than manual labourers.

But Northland principals say while AI is advancing, it can’t replace human values – such as critical thinking, empathy, and imagination – needed in the workplace.

ChatGPT, released in November last year, is an artificial intelligence chatbot that churns out human-like text such as blogs, essays, computing code, websites, and even artwork.

Among the businesses using the groundbreaking piece of technology are BusinessDesk and delivery-based grocer Teddy. BusinessDesk uses AI to transform company announcements into articles in less than a minute. Whereas Teddy uses ChatGPT to cut costs and boost sales.

Despite some companies are dipping their toes in the AI pond, the landscape of the future job market is still unknown, practising futurist Chris Clay said.

The We Create Futures director, whose job is to help people think about change and how they might exist within it, said preparing people for “the workforce of the future” was “impossible”.

“… Because we have absolutely no idea what that is”.

Te Tai Tokerau Principals’ Association president Pat Newman said most jobs kids will be working in were yet to be invented.

But Clay said the unknown didn’t mean we shouldn’t do anything.

Rather than looking for a horse to back, people should be considering how they can become more resilient, he explained.

“At the minute we’re in a society where everything is guided by corporations, jobs and being able to afford a house.

“That’s the main constraint on people’s lives so they’re looking for every tool they can grasp to try to help move them towards that sort of future.”

Whereas, Clay suggested people look to collective intelligence – making decisions and a sense of situations together – as a way forward.

“We need to be aware of what is changing now, what might the future be and hold plural ideas of that and be willing to explore differences.

“How can we think about what kind of future we want and how can we bring that about.”

A message educators have already turned their attention to.

Newman, principal at Hora Hora School, said they are focused on instilling youngsters with strong values essential to a workplace and unique to humans.

“We need to teach them to be flexible, caring, thinking, and adaptable to whatever is coming.”

The approach will give them an edge in a job market where knowledge isn’t necessarily exclusive.

“We’ve got the University of YouTube,” Newman said. “You can pull up YouTube, search how to fix my washing machine, and it can give you step-by-step instructions.”

Then add the competition of AI, such as ChatGPT, which he called “a minor taste of what we can be sure we are going to get technology-wise”.

Both Newman and Clay encouraged people not to fear AI.

Clay said: “People often reject this stuff because they’ve got a singular story that their brain is telling them, that AI is this mean nasty thing that Elon Musk is going to use to turn us all into slaves of the Terminator but we need to challenge ourselves to think what else could it be.”

He acknowledged ChatGPT had its fallbacks but appealed to people to be both more critical and imaginative regarding AI.

Te Manihi Tumuaki Northland Secondary Principals’ Association chairman Alec Solomon agreed, saying generations have been through this before.

“If I told my grandparents I’d one day be doing my banking on a phone they would’ve thought I was barking mad.

“Technology is here, it’s not going anywhere and it is ever-changing,” the Tikipunga High School principal said.

But he warned against people “diving blindly ahead” into new technology.

Solomon didn’t believe AI would supersede a responsible employee with a strong work ethic and values.

“If students are focused on achieving then opportunities will present themselves regardless of the changing world around them,” he said.

ChatGPT: What is it?

ChatGPT – or Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer – is an AI chatbot launched by artificial intelligence research and deployment company, Open AI, in November last year.

A user enters prompts which the tool then responds with realistic, human-like text as it answers questions or composes various written content that can include essays, articles, codes, emails and plenty more.

ChatGPT is akin to automated chat services used on customer service websites as users can ask questions or request clarification to its replies.