ChatGPT and the Future of Colleges

Here’s a short piece (maybe written by AI) that provides a more fulsome list:

For those who don’t like to click, the following are listed as vulnerable:

  • Tech (coders, programmers, software engineers and data analysts)

  • Media (advertising, content creation, tech writing and journalism)

  • Legal (paralegals and legal assistants)

  • Market research analysts

  • Teachers

  • Finance (analysts and personal financial advisors)

  • Traders

  • Graphic designers

  • Accountants

  • Customer service agents

My zone is heavy on accountants, finance people, lawyers and paralegals. If I were to rank order the risk, I would put accounting at or near the top. We’ve already written several bots that eliminate X number of FTEs, and we’re not close to doing anything like that in the other functions. There is A LOT of low hanging fruit in the accounting profession in my opinion. The Big 4 employ people at six figure salaries to work on audit teams who, at the more junior levels, get paid to do pretty low level work. The mid- to more senior level managers aren’t immune either. Especially given their reliance on data sampling, it is not inconceivable that the entire audit staff can be AI’d at some point, though the government will have to say that’s OK before it can happen. There will certainly be corporate pressure because nobody likes paying the auditors. Finance and the paralegals are a little less clear to me, but I can see some room for AI there. Lawyers are little further off IMO because starting pretty early on in one’s career judgment is involved. But no doubt there are legal functions that can be AI’d.

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