Airbnb CEO Says Workers Shouldn’t Fear AI. Is He Right?

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AI could automate 300 million jobs, but some people think it’ll create more positions than it will eliminate. Read on to find out how AI is impacting workers. 

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky thinks artificial intelligence (AI) software, like the popular chatbot ChatGPT, will help entrepreneurs start businesses. Chesky said last month on the “This Week in Startups” podcast, “I think this is going to create millions of startups … entrepreneurship is going to be a boon.”

Chesky said that some people are worried about AI taking their jobs, but he added, “You only have to be worried if you don’t want to be a part of it because this is a creative tool for you.”

But while he’s optimistic that AI will be mostly good for workers, the results are mixed.

AI could both help and hurt workers

Chesky said that while it’s easy to think of all the ways AI could eliminate jobs, it’s harder to come up with a list of new jobs because we can’t yet conceive of everything AI can do. “But if we remember that at all other periods in history, technology created jobs that didn’t exist. This can do that too.”

He’s not entirely wrong to be optimistic. A recent Stanford and MIT study showed that workers who used AI in their jobs increased their productivity by 14% on average. The study also indicated that customer satisfaction and employee retention were higher when AI was involved.

AI could also create a lot of economic value. According to a recent Goldman Sachs report, an AI-powered increase in productivity could create $7 trillion in additional gross domestic product (GDP) over a 10-year period.

But this doesn’t mean everyone should be optimistic about AI. The same Goldman Sachs report also said 300 million full-time jobs are at risk of being fully automated. In the U.S. alone, two-thirds of jobs are exposed to some degree of automation.

Additionally, recent articles from the BBC and The Washington Post gave examples of copywriting and marketing jobs disappearing because of AI chatbots. Some people had to change careers entirely, with one writer becoming a dog walker and the other repairing air conditioners.

But it’s not just writers that are feeling the effects of AI. A recent report from the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas found that 5% of May’s layoffs were due to artificial intelligence. The losses all came from the technology industry, and the report’s authors said they were surprised at how quickly AI contributed to the layoffs.

It’s too early to tell what will happen with AI and jobs

It’s still unclear to what extent artificial intelligence will impact jobs. But it’s already apparent that some workers may have to adapt to AI’s influence faster than others. For workers who have their own side hustle or small business focused on making creative content, AI may affect your work sooner rather than later.

As Chesky noted on the podcast, AI will be both “awesome for many people” and “wildly disruptive for others.”

If AI could take away your job, it may be worth asking yourself what you’d be interested in doing if that happens one day and making some preparations now. That may mean exploring new side projects to boost your checking account balance. Or, it may mean coming up with a plan to earn passive income.

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