“Some creative jobs maybe will go away, but maybe they shouldn’t have been there in the first place” That’s what Albania-born OpenAI CTO Mira Murati said when asked about the potential for AI-driven job displacement.

Murati, a 2012 graduate of the Thayer School of Engineering, also touched on topics from her journey at OpenAI to the ethical considerations surrounding large language models and precision health.

Murati made these statements while discussing the future of AI and its potential impact on society in a recent interview at her alma mater, Dartmouth College.

During the interview, Mira was asked about the potential for AI-driven job displacement. In response, she said that some creative jobs will go away as they shouldn’t have been there in the first place. 

“Some creative jobs maybe will go away, But maybe they shouldn’t have been there in the first place,” Mira said.

She didn’t specifically name the creative jobs, but the comment was made amid a discussion about the entertainment industry, which has seen massive backlash from workers. Namely, screenwriters and actors went on strike in 2023 over the use of AI in Hollywood.

Needless to say, the prospect of AI automating tasks traditionally performed by humans, particularly within creative fields, has raised concerns about job security and the future of work.

In fact, a Wall Street Journal report stated that since the arrival of ChatGPT and similar platforms, the number of freelance jobs posted on Upwork, Fiverr, and related platforms have dropped by as much as 21%.

Mira, while emphasizing the collaborative nature of AI tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E, suggested that these technologies, rather than replacing human creativity, actually serve to enhance and expand it, providing new avenues for artistic expression and problem-solving.

“It’s a tool, right?” she remarked, “It certainly can do that as a tool, and I expect that we will actually we will collaborate with it and it’s going to make our creativity expand.”

While Murati says AI is likely to lead to job displacement, she couldn’t seem to give an answer on exactly how impactful the technology will be, noting that AI will create new work, too.

“I’m not an economist, but I certainly anticipate that a lot of jobs will change. Some jobs will be lost, some jobs will be gained,” Murati says, adding that the jobs most likely to die off are those that are “strictly repetitive,” and not “advancing further” creativity or problem-solving.