Anthropic Research: Compared to Programmers, the Teaching Profession is Harder to Replace with AI

The sophistication of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in automating tasks or jobs has led to frequent predictions that this technology will replace human roles in various fields or professions. Interestingly, among various professions, teachers or educators are harder for AI to replace than programmers. At least, that is the finding from research by Anthropic researchers, a technology company developing the generative AI model Claude. Meanwhile, programmers’ tasks such as coding, creating updates, and managing software are now increasingly being taken over automatically by AI. In the report, the researchers identified which tasks have the potential to be automated by AI. Additionally, they compared this potential with real data on the usage of the Claude chatbot by professionals in the current workforce. Anthropic concludes that AI adoption in the real workforce is still far from the limits of its capabilities. Furthermore, the report clearly maps out which professions are now beginning to be “colonised” by AI and which ones remain resistant to the threat. In general, in the Anthropic report, professions threatened by AI replacement are digital jobs that involve screen-based work. One of them is programmers, who rank at the top, followed by the full list. One interesting fact from this report is that the workers most vulnerable to being displaced by AI actually come from the group of highly educated and high-paid professionals. Data shows that workers highly exposed to AI are dominated by bachelor’s degree graduates (37.1 percent) and postgraduates (17.4 percent). Their average salary ($32.69 US/hour) is also much higher compared to workers not exposed to AI at all ($22.23 US/hour). Therefore, the threat of mass layoffs due to AI does not seem to become a reality in the near future.