ChatGPT is about to shake up the world. For one thing, the essay is dead. Schools and universities will have to change the way they teach, and the way they assign grades. If you work in law; better start looking for a new career. ChatGPT generated a recording contract for me in less than 40 seconds, and it was free!

Copywriters, it’s time to put down your pen. I asked ChatGPT to generate advertising copy for a wealth management company. This, according to a senior member of staff, was at least as good as that produced by their ad agency.

So, a lot of industries are going to dwindle or die, with thousands being thrown out of work. That, at least, is the prediction of the tech “optimists”. But hang on, let’s keep Nestroy’s famous line in mind: “the trouble about progress is that it always looks much greater than it really is.” Perhaps ChatGPT is just another flash in the pan?

Technological advances kill off existing practices, but they also create opportunities

What do the experts think? According to Jessica Ogilvy-Stuart, one of the world’s leading educational consultants: “ChatGPT means schools and universities will return to handwritten exams and possibly even vivas. This may reinforce inequalities between the institutions with deep pockets, and those without. We may see the closure of a large number of educational establishments.”

What about the law? Surely, a lot of the straightforward stuff will be easy enough for AI to handle? However, when I ran the ChatGPT-generated recording contract past top entertainment lawyer Jonathan Coad he wasn’t impressed: “It’s hopelessly inadequate. Too many key elements missing to list them all. If this is what you get from the software then in its present form it is precious little use.”

What about copywriting? I asked a couple of multi-award-winning ad veterans: Phil Cockrell, and Mike McKenna.

“ChatGPT will definitely scoop up the low-level writing stuff,” says Phil, “but it isn’t going to generate any award-winning ads.” And according to Mike: “In its current form, I don’t think ChatGPT poses an existential threat to the advertising industry… but who knows what its next iteration will bring.”

Of course, many hotly anticipated “revolutions” came to nothing. However, some of history’s most important revolutions were initially dismissed as mere ephemera. The invention of the motor car was deemed a “soon-to-pass craze”; the telephone was seen as “little more than a toy”; and my favourite: “Guitar groups are on the way out, Mr Epstein.”

So, what about the implications of ChatGPT ? It has the potential to revolutionise such fields as customer service, content creation and language translation. It could automate tasks that currently require human language expertise, potentially leading to job losses. However, it could also lead to increased efficiency and productivity, which could boost economic growth. The development and use of AI could also create new job opportunities in fields such as data science, machine learning, and software development. AI could also be used to improve decision-making and optimise business processes.

What did you think of the last paragraph? Not too bad for a robot! Yep, it was the work of ChatGPT.

I think AI will kill several industries, but is that only going to happen when it can successfully emulate the human touch? The answer is no. And this is the crucial point. Technological advances precipitate what Schumpeter termed “creative destruction”; Unfortunately, we’re very bad at predicting the results of creative destruction. We tend to fixate on a picture of a new technology in the economy as it currently exists. That is a mistake.

By way of example, when music computers first came in about 40 years ago, many despaired at the coming demise of the real musician. The standard counter-argument was that musicians were safe until AI could convincingly replicate a human musician. But that was the wrong way to look at it.

All these years later even the most advanced pieces of software still cannot replicate a real musician without a great deal of input from a real human.

You see, despite claims to the contrary, it wasn’t necessary to replicate human performance.

Technological advances kill off existing practices, but they also create opportunities and open up previously unimaginable markets. In music, the advent of computers led to the emergence of hugely popular new genres; genres that relied on the sonic characteristics of computers; genres where the timbre of traditional instruments simply didn’t fit.

This is the key: technology doesn’t just affect supply, it also changes tastes and therefore the patterns of demand. And that’s what creates new opportunities. However, such changes are exceedingly difficult to predict. The future does have the reliable habit of taking us by surprise.

Peter Lawlor is the Principal Economic Advisor to 7Ridge Capital and an adviser to senior Wall St figures. These are strictly his own views