The writers are the authors of ‘The Future of the Professions’ChatGPT opened a new chapter in the artificial intelligence story we have been working on for more than a decade. Our research has focused on the impact of AI on professional work, looking at technologies across eight sectors, including medicine, law, teaching and accountancy.
Overall, the narrative laid out in our book, The Future of the Professions, has been optimistic. At a time when professional advice is too expensive, and our health, justice, education and audit systems are often failing us, AI offers the promise of easier access to the best expertise. Understandably, some professionals find this threatening because the latest generative AI systems are already outperforming human professionals in some tasks — from writing effective code to drafting compelling documents.
Contrary to many predictions that AI would be “narrow” for years yet, the latest systems have far wider scope than those that came before, as happy diagnosing illnesses as they are designing beautiful buildings or drawing up lesson plans.