AI has stolen £120,000 from Joe Turner.
The 38-year-old writer lost 70% of his clients to chatbots in two years.
His is one of 40 job roles that AI is fast replacing, according to conversations the Money team had with industry experts, researchers, and affected workers.
Read all the latest Money news here
“It’s a betrayal,” says Turner, who earned six figures as a freelancer before the rise of generative AI.
“You’ve put your heart and soul into it for so long, and then you get replaced by a machine.”
He adds: “You always think ‘it’s never going to happen to me’.”
Around 85% of the tasks involved in Turner’s job could be performed by AI, according to research published by Microsoft in July that has gone largely unnoticed.
The tech giant’s analysis of 200,000 conversations with its Co-Pilot chatbot concluded it could complete at least 90% of the work carried out by historians and coders, 80% of salespeople and journalists, and 75% of DJs and data scientists.
Also in the top 40 most exposed jobs were customer service assistants (72%), financial advisers (69%) and product promoters (62%). Search the table below to see how your role fares…
Speaking to the Money team, senior Microsoft researcher Kiran Tomlinson insists the study “explores which job categories can productively use AI chatbots, not take away or replace jobs”.
Turner for one doesn’t buy this. “That’s what they want to market it as,” he says.
Experts we spoke with were just as sceptical of Microsoft’s optimism.
Read more:
‘I’ve been turned into an AI voice over and nobody told me’
Cloned voices ‘could become as common as stunt doubles’
Stars release silent album in protest at AI copyright plans
‘Replaced entirely by the tool’
“If you were to look at these jobs in three to five years, there’s a very good chance they’ve been replaced entirely,” says an AI consultant with more than a decade of…
