The trend: The debut of generative AI made attendees at the World Economic Forum in Davos nervous about the future of white-collar jobs and the rise of misinformation.

• AI can now process a mortgage application in minutes compared with the previous 30 days, according to Automation Anywhere CEO Mihir Shukla, per The Guardian.
• OpenAI’s ChatGPT passed Wharton MBA and medical school exams.
• It’s being used to write legislation and by C-suite executives.
• It’s also writing news articles while Copilot writes computer code and DALL-E creates art.
• Meta’s Cicero beat humans at a game of social strategy and diplomacy.
• An AI program will serve as a courtroom lawyer for the first time, while AI diagnoses and devises treatments for illness.

Tech recession as harbinger: The tech industry is turning to AI as its flagship product while the layoff bloodbath continues.

• Google is hatching big generative AI plans immediately after it laid off 12,000 workers, some of whom learned about their termination when their badges failed at office entryways.
• Microsoft laid off 10,000 employees, including all of its VR, mixed reality, and HoloLens workers, as it was planning a $10 billion investment in OpenAI.

The overall US job market is strong for now, but if a recession hits, the fear faced by blue-collar workers for decades—that machines will replace them—will be more acutely shared by their white-collar counterparts.

The main takeaways: ChatGPT is sending shockwaves around the world, but in its current state, it’s only suitable for augmenting human creativity, not replacing it.

• In the short term, human creativity will continue to be essential to the economy.
• AI is trained using intellectual assets created by people, so in theory, if people stop creating, AI will run out of fresh source data.
• People’s need to connect with other people and express themselves is in itself an economic driver and is what fuels a lot of the branding behind digital content that AI can’t easily substitute.

ChatGPT is a stepping stone to artificial general intelligence (AGI) for tech companies making rapid progress in the field.

• AGI could be capable of working independently and creating fresh data sources.
• It might also develop personalities that people will want to connect with in lieu of human relationships.
• The timeline for this becoming reality is unknown, but it could happen at a pace faster than society can adapt to, fueling existential risk.

This article originally appeared in Insider Intelligence's Connectivity & Tech Briefing—a daily recap of top stories reshaping the technology industry. Subscribe to have more hard-hitting takeaways delivered to your inbox daily.

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