A.I. Tries 20 Jobs | WIRED

I'm a lawyer.

[Copywriter] Copywriter.

[Doctor] Doctor. Music producer.

[Trainer] Personal trainer.

[Engineer] Software engineer.

[DJ] DJ. I wanna know-

Can- AI-

Do- My-

Job?

[upbeat electronic music]

[bell dings]

I'm a software engineer.

[upbeat synth pop music]

Where I work, we're always trying to know,

where can I find the best craft beer?

Please generate the code for a website

using HTML, CSS, and Flask

that tells me where there's craft beer near me.

[UI beeping] [bell dings]

This is just raw code.

You actually need to run the code somewhere.

I'm copying, pasting the code into separate files,

and it generates a website.

How cool.

Here's our website.

All three pieces, the backend, the frontend,

and the styling did actually make something

that was human readable.

That that generates a website

that we can look at and understand what it does,

does seem like a huge feat to me.

[transition whooshes] [bell dings]

I'm a doctor.

This prompt is something that a patient might enter.

I have a fever, rash, and body aches.

The rash looks like small welts on my genitals.

Do I have monkeypox?

[UI beeping] [bell dings]

The response is pretty solid

in the sense that it's unlikely that you have monkeypox,

though a specific thing it got right

was that the monkeypox rash is actually not prominent

on the genital area.

It goes on to say that a rash in the genital area

most likely is an STI.

The rest of the answer is just fluff.

Talking to your healthcare provider,

which is pretty obvious.

Can AI do my job?

I don't think it's there yet.

I think the AI right now is really good

for a first-year medical student.

[transition whooshes] [bell dings]

I'm a graphic designer.

Rebrand the McDonald's logo as vegan.

[UI beeping] [bell dings]

I'm seeing four image variations.

It's struggling with text.

It's looking sort of like characters

but in some sort of fictional language.

I wouldn't send any of these straight away to McDonald's.

They do each need a little bit of work.

The fourth one, I think, is maybe the strongest.

It's leaning towards more organic colors.

Overall, I don't think AI can do my job.

I kind of see this as a more evolved Pinterest.

I can use it as a base for inspiration,

but I don't think it will replace me altogether,

or so I hope.

[transition whooshes] [bell dings]

I'm a therapist.

People come to me when they want help

in dating or relationships.

Please answer the following question

in a way a relationship therapist would.

Why do I always fight with my partners?

[UI beeping] [bell dings]

Conflicts are a natural part of any relationship.

Fighting or arguing is not necessarily a sign

of a bad relationship.

Great.

Some possible factors include communication issues,

stress and life events, different conflict styles.

How do I know what my conflict style is?

Reflect on your past conflicts.

Observe your behavior during conflicts.

Most people are incapable of reflecting

on their conflict style during conflicts.

So while this is great information,

I'm not sure how actionable it is.

What AI has done is it's just dumped a bunch of information.

Were I to be a client,

I would probably want my money back.

That's just me.

So can AI do my job?

I would say, have self-help books done my job?

People don't lack knowledge.

They lack the ability to follow through.

[transition whooshes] [bell dings]

I'm a stand-up comedian,

and I wanna know if an AI can do my job.

Write a 100-word minimum funny stand-up comedy joke.

[UI beeping] [bell dings]

Let me go ahead and perform this, and we'll see what we got.

Online dating, what a wild ride that is.

You know what they say,

swipe right for love and left for,

well, probably just another cat person.

But hey, at least it's better than meeting someone at a bar

and realizing you have the same dad again.

Like, what site are you using, ancestry.com?

That's a little creepy. [chuckles]

It has the cadence right,

which is what's so fascinating to me. [laughs]

And it's kinda creeping me out.

I did think it was cute when it was like,

Oh, swipe left on a cat person,

although, let's be honest, that's a little feline phobic.

I'm not concerned about the AI yet.

It could take a crappier comedian's job,

but it can't take mine.

[transition whooshes] [bell dings]

I'm a lawyer.

My client is asking me whether or not

they can sell someone's health information.

Please write a legal memorandum about this.

[UI beeping] [bell dings]

In a true legal memorandum,

it would give you which sections

of the regulation you're talking about,

which this is not doing.

It doesn't say what the penalties are.

Is it criminal? Is it civil?

I don't really know where it's getting its information.

I don't know how much you can trust this.

If it were, like, a legal associate,

I would say go back and do a better job.

[transition whooshes] [bell dings]

I'm a news anchor.

I wanna know if AI can do my job.

I have given the AI some text to read.

[UI beeping] [bell dings]

A forest fire has blazed through a large part

of the southern mountain region of the country.

She didn't sound natural.

It sounded like a machine speaking.

The lips look weird.

It looked like the lips did not belong to the face.

And provide aid to those affected.

When I speak, I'm moving my hands,

but I'm also moving some of my body.

She wasn't doing that.

I do a newscast in Spanish.

[anchor speaking Spanish]

Now let's see how it does with the Spanish newscast.

[AI anchor speaking Spanish]

It sucked in Spanish. [laughing]

She actually threw in some Spanglish there.

[AI anchor speaking Spanish]

And the accent.

[AI anchor speaking Spanish]

She definitely struggled there.

The AI cannot take my job, for now.

[transition whooshes] [bell dings]

I'm a bartender.

Surprise me with a twist on a negroni, and give it a name.

[UI beeping] [bell dings]

Fill a mixing glass with ice.

Add the gin, Campari, and sweet vermouth.

Gently muddle two to three fresh sage leaves in the glass.

Stir the mixture until well chilled.

Express the orange peel over the drink.

Release the oils and use it as a garnish.

There you go. You have your Sage Negroni.

So it's a good, classic Negroni.

I'm not really getting sage.

Just adding the sage leaves was not very creative.

AI didn't ask me any follow-up questions.

I would say, What do you like?

Is there a style of gin that you like?

I think, if you wanna have a truly bespoke cocktail,

you gotta go see a bartender.

[transition whooshes] [bell dings]

I'm a screenwriter.

I'm gonna give this AI a prompt

that describes a scene in my latest movie

and to see how well it can match it.

In this scene, set in 1949, three World War II widows

toast to their younger sister Ruby's wedding.

[UI beeping] [bell dings]

Exterior, beach, day.

Mildred, Shirley, and Charlotte frolic

at the shoreline of the beach.

[Charlotte] And may you never have to experience

the heartbreak that we did.

The character literally says exactly what, like,

you want the story to do.

[Shirley] What's going on? Ruby seems tense.

[Mildred] I don't know, but I'm going to find out.

Just very on-the-nose dialogue.

There's a lot of parentheticals

describing how the character is saying the line.

This is a screenwriter no-no.

You start to tip into the director's territory.

I think that AI can help with my job

in conceptual brainstorming,

playing out scene ideas if you get stuck on a scene.

But overall, I don't think AI can do my job.

[transition whooshes] [bell dings]

I'm a music producer.

I'm writing a song for a pop client.

Please write this song and include chords for the guitar.

The client is heavily influenced by Lana Del Rey.

[UI beeping] [bell dings]

It looks like we've gotten a chord structure

and some lyrics.

A typical progression, so not too interesting,

but that's okay.

So let's make a beat. When I work with an artist

that's looking for a specific influence,

I'll think about the BPM that that artist usually goes for.

[upbeat pop music]

Okay, this is pretty good.

It's a good start.

♪ Another gray day in the city ♪

♪ I'm feeling lost, oh, such a pity ♪

♪ City lights ♪

♪ And heartbeats ♪

♪ You walk in ♪

♪ And make me complete ♪

I like that.

It's a starting point.

Of course, some of the lyrics are super corny.

I will admit, a lot of the time,

that's how it starts for me.

Right now, these programs can't do my job.

[transition whooshes] [bell dings]

I'm a journalist.

I'm the reviews editor at Wired,

and I test products for a living.

So I asked ChatGPT to write a review of a product

that I've actually written about

in the style of my own writing.

[UI beeping] [bell dings]

When it comes to electric skateboards,

there are plenty of options to choose from.

A little boring.

This is pulling in data specifically from my review,

and so it has a lot of similar characteristics

and sentences that I might typically use.

Unfortunately, I think it's stripped away

a lot of the personality in the original review.

It kind of just took a lot of the basic details

and spit out this thing that is kind of generic.

As for things it did right,

it actually brought out a lot of these specs

like the 3,000-watt motors, the 26 miles-per-hour speeds.

When reading this review,

it almost sounds like I could've written it

by just reading a press release.

The AI cannot physically handle this product.

It's not exactly testing the product itself.

At that point, can you really trust

where the source is coming from?

Asking ChatGPT to write a review

based in my voice is definitely weird.

[transition whooshes] [bell dings]

I'm a circus artist.

What would I ask the AI to do?

Hmm.

I don't think there's anything that I can think of

that I would have AI do for me.

[transition whooshes] [bell dings]

I'm a copywriter.

McDonald's just went 100% vegan.

Write several taglines.

[UI beeping] [bell dings]

So we've got, Veganize your taste buds today.

Feels like a used car salesman.

No animals harmed, only flavor enhanced.

I don't ever go to a fast food restaurant and say,

Mm, I really want my flavor enhanced.

That's not something I'm ever looking for.

Our last one here is, wow, very short.

We've got, It's time to go green.

Did it run out of words?

It typed up some general ideas,

which actually could help if you were brainstorming

and you're like, I have nothing at all.

AI could do my job at a very, like,

a Monday-morning, no-coffee kind of way.

If you wanted to pay no money and get a bad product,

sure, AI could do my job.

[transition whooshes] [bell dings]

I'm a personal trainer.

Please design a fat-burning weekly at-home workout plan.

[UI beeping] [bell dings]

This is definitely a typical plan

that someone might want to burn calories

with a full-body workout.

You're also doing some type of pull workout

that's gonna work your back, your posterior chain,

and you're also doing some kind of push.

So I will say that I like that,

that it's giving a full range of those types of exercises.

Most people know what a pushup is,

but do they know how to correctly do a pushup?

It's saying three sets of 8 to 10 reps,

but how much time is in between each set?

Ideally, you would wanna be able to see the client

in person or on a virtual call

so that you can see what their form looks like.

I don't think AI can do my job.

[transition whooshes] [bell dings]

I'm a DJ.

I have my radio show coming up.

I play uplifting disco music for about two hours.

Make a full playlist/set list for my show.

[UI beeping] [bell dings]

It's hitting the disco on the head, for sure.

I've played a few of these artists on my show before,

so it's definitely getting pretty close

to maybe what a track list would be.

One of these tracks, Gotta Keep On by Sweet Cream,

I looked it up, and there's no trace of it

on the Internet anywhere.

Where did it get this song from?

Does the song actually exist?

AI can make a playlist.

Being able to look out into a room

and look out into a dance floor and say,

Okay, people are tired. Let me match that energy,

I don't think that it can do that,

based on what I've seen.

[transition whooshes] [bell dings]

I'm a voice actor.

[upbeat synth pop music]

Fashion shouldn't cost the earth.

We've created a new line of compostable shoes

that are made from sustainable materials.

I've asked the AI to read this copy.

[UI beeping] [bell dings]

Let's hear this thing.

[AI] Fashion shouldn't cost the earth.

We've created a new line of compostable shoes

that are made from sustainable materials.

It did okay but not great.

It's very computer-like. [chuckles]

It has a strange cadence,

and so it ends every sentence like this-

Sustainable materials.

Which is not the way a human talks.

It can't change on the fly.

Is there a joke that I'm supposed to get in the next line?

It doesn't understand all those things,

the things that come from, like, life experiences.

It's never going to be, like,

the thing that you're gonna use

for, like, McDonald's commercials.

It's gonna be, like,

the things that no one really likes to do anyway,

like 400 hours of instruction manuals

or something like that.

Can AI do my job?

Kinda, but not really well,

although it still freaks me out.

[transition whooshes] [bell dings]

I'm an influencer.

And I wanna know if AI can do my job.

I want ChatGPT to help me with an IG caption

that's a picture of me smiling,

standing at the top of Montmartre in Paris.

[UI beeping] [bell dings]

Standing on top of the world,

or at least on top of Montmartre, smiley face, eyes.

The view from here is breathtaking.

The Sacre Coeur in my back,

reminding me of the city's rich history and culture.

Feeling grateful and inspired.

What a day it has been, #grateful.

This is, like, really strong,

but it doesn't necessarily capture how I would speak.

My audience would know that this is not me,

[laughs] probably from the overwhelming amount of emojis

I would probably say, like, Hey, y'all,

or, like, Sis, that was amazing.

This AI program cannot do my job, but it's very close.

[transition whooshes] [bell dings]

I'm a chef.

Write a recipe for an Indian restaurant meal.

Include a protein marination.

[UI beeping] [bell dings]

It's got, definitely, a lot of spices

that you use in Indian cooking.

It's actually missing a key component.

It didn't include yogurt,

which kind of acts as a binding agent.

400 degrees, 20 to 25 minutes for chicken,

it would probably dry it out.

Overall, I would say it's like a nice 8 out of 10 dish.

I do think a substantial part of being a chef

is that creativity and coming up with dishes.

So in terms of that aspect of the job,

I think AI comes dangerously close

to being able to do my job.

[transition whooshes] [bell dings]

I'm a translator.

Please translate the opening paragraph

of The Sun Also Rises into Korean.

[UI beeping] [bell dings]

Structure of sentence, pretty good,

but there are so many mistake.

Like, if you see the second sentence,

this is wrong translation.

In Korean, we have casual form and also respectful form.

This AI translation used basic written form

in first sentence, but in the second sentence,

he used, like, respectful form.

It's not consistent.

AI cannot do my job.

Maybe, someday, it can do it,

but so far, it's like, it made so many mistake.

[transition whooshes] [bell dings]

I'm a firefighter.

[upbeat synth pop music]

There's no way AI can do my job.

[upbeat electronic music]