Microsoft study identifies 40 jobs AI chatbots are likely to help automate — and those where the tech is barely being used

An AI chatbot is a pretty good interpreter. It can't dredge a river.

Microsoft researchers analyzed which careers are most and least likely to be affected by generative AI and large language models based on an anonymized dataset of 200,000 conversations between users in the United States and the tech giant's Copilot chatbot, formerly known as Bing Copilot.

They found that the jobs most likely to be affected involved those providing and communicating information, including translators, historians, and writers.

The researchers avoided the most pressing question about AI: the extent to which it will eliminate or even grow jobs in the workforce. Rival CEOs have disputed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's view that AI could wipe out up to half of white-collar entry-level jobs in the next five years. Others in tech, such as Mark Cuban, think AI will be a net job creator.

The paper doesn't cover whether interpreters and translators (the occupations they found that most overlapped with AI) should be fearful about their future. Likewise, the researchers didn't conclude that dredge operators (among the least affected occupations) were safe.

"Our research shows that AI supports many tasks, particularly those involving research, writing, and communication, but does not indicate it can fully perform any single occupation," Kiran Tomlinson, a senior researcher at Microsoft who's the lead author of the paper, said in a statement to Business Insider. "As AI adoption accelerates, it's important that we continue to study and better understand its societal and economic impact."

Based on the chatbot data, researchers could see what users were asking the AI to do and what the AI was performing in response. They could then compare these findings with the types of tasks that are most likely to overlap with an AI chatbot.

Their findings echo the growing research and views that AI chatbots will probably have a much greater overlap with office jobs than those requiring physical work or interactions. If this holds true, it means AI would change a different part of the workforce than past technological revolutions.

Among the least affected jobs were phlebotomists, nursing assistants, and hazardous materials removal workers.

This doesn't mean physical labor jobs aren't affected. The researchers also cautioned that their data concerns only large language models.

"Other applications of AI could certainly affect occupations involving operating and monitoring machinery, such as truck driving," they wrote.