Generative AI Requires Broad Labor Policy Considerations

Artificial intelligence (AI), like other technologies in the past, will likely affect the economy in many ways, potentially stimulating growth and changing the way people work.11 The effect of AI on work will be multifaceted and will likely vary across occupations and industries.4 The public release of tools such as Dall-E 2, which generates digital images from natural language prompts, in September 2022 and ChatGPT, which generates text responses to natural language prompts, in November 2022 has drawn the attention of the general public to progress in generative AI technologies, stimulating excitement in the potential of these technologies, but also concern over potential negative effects on employment. The expanded scope of uses presented by generative AI technologies has raised questions regarding whether such technologies may affect a broader range of occupations, including those that are highly creative.16 Recent research, including our own9 and work by the Pew Research Center,12 suggests there is a strong positive correlation between exposure to generative AI and median salaries, the required level of education, and the presence of creative abilities within an occupation, and that occupations with a higher percent of female or Asian workers are more exposed, whereas occupations with a higher percent of Black or Hispanic workers are less exposed to generative AI.