The economist who predicted that A.I. would replace half of all U.S. jobs now says ChatGPT is the equivalent of Uber disrupting the taxi industry—and it could lead to lower wages

ChatGPT has been the talk of the town since it was launched in November. While the underlying technology isn’t new, artificial intelligence like this has never been so accessible to the public, and the OpenAI-owned bot has blown minds with its ability to complete a wide range of tasks, from passing business school exams to drafting State of the Union speeches.

Just 10 years ago, a lot of artificial-intelligence-related developments felt like science fiction, and predictions for how they would shape industries were often ominous for workers. In 2013, two Oxford University economists, Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne, wrote a paper in which they predicted that 47% of U.S. employment was under threat from “computerisation” or automation.

A decade later, automation is here and fast becoming a part of almost every industry. But Frey doesn’t think that we’re at nearly half of human workers being replaced just yet. He does think, however, that ChatGPT could create a lot more competition, which would lower wages.

“I think there’s a risk that ChatGPT makes us a lot more productive in easy-to-do stuff, but the hard part to figure out is how we can use A.I. to create innovation that then creates new occupations and new industries,” Frey told Fortune.

He pointed to various trends that have already been driving wages down, from the computer revolution that impacted middle-income jobs to the steadily falling income of prime-age men. And if ChatGPT is successful in…