An insightful new paper from OpenAI’s research group begins:

Most analysis of AI’s impact on the labor market begins with the same core question: what jobs are most exposed to AI? That is an important starting point, but it is not enough when it comes to measuring the risk of major labor market disruption. Exposure helps us understand where AI has technical capability. It cannot, on its own, tell us which jobs are most likely to be automated, redesigned, or expanded in the near term.

Most analysis of AI’s impact on the labor market begins with the same core question: what jobs are most exposed to AI? That is an important starting point, but it is not enough when it comes to measuring the risk of major labor market disruption. Exposure helps us understand where AI has technical capability. It cannot, on its own, tell us which jobs are most likely to be automated, redesigned, or expanded in the near term.

The paper introduces “the AI Jobs Transition Framework” that attempts to shift the conversation away from analyzing which occupations are most exposed to AI and toward analyzing three factors: the degree to which an occupation requires a human worker, the relationship between demand for goods and services and the price of those goods and services, and the degree to which an occupation is technically exposed to AI.

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The third is familiar, but let’s take the first two in turn.

Human beings will still need to be teachers in classrooms, even if generative AI tools do a lot of the tasks currently performed by teachers. It may be that one day generative AI could do the work of federal judges, but it is unlikely that the legal system would allow a large language model to issue criminal sentences. Some occupations require a service provider to engender trust and persuasion that AI tools are unlikely to provide (though that may change). These sorts of occupations require human workers to a larger degree than, say, customer service representatives.

Generative AI tools will increase productivity, allowing firms to sell goods and services for lower prices. This could reduce employment in some occupations. But it could raise employment in other occupations, if the price cut induces a relatively large increase in market demand for the good or service being sold by a given firm, which in turn would increase........

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