The Curious Companion: Ep. 4 – Overhyped or Underestimated: Is ChatGPT Coming for Your Job?​

Curious Reader!

Welcome to this week’s ChatGPT Curious companion newsletter.

First off, a HUGE thank you for such a warm welcome and incredible response to the launch. Ya’ll are the best. 💚

What you came for is below, and you can CLICK HERE to listen to the episode if you decide you prefer earbuds to eyeballs.

Happy reading!

This episode digs into whether ChatGPT is as transformative as headlines make it seem, or whether its impact, especially on jobs, is being overstated. Using the release of GPT-5 as a backdrop, I break down what’s new, what’s hype, and why the reality is more nuanced than the marketing. From AI “agents” to AGI, we explore what’s actually happening, what’s being promised, and what it means for the average worker.

The Launch of GPT-5

OpenAI serendipitously released GPT-5 on August 7th, the same day ChatGPT Curious launched. I promise I don’t have any inside sources. The announcement included claims of “PhD-level intelligence,” improved benchmark performance, and new integrations with email and calendars.

My Takeaways:

  • Most people likely won’t notice a difference
  • The biggest change is that users no longer select a model—ChatGPT chooses a model for you behind the scenes based on what you’re trying to do
    • This shift toward model unification means you’re not choosing between versions such as 4o, o3 (that was the deep research model), or o4 mini anymore.
      • If you had no idea these models even existed, you’re not alone…and this is also why I’m not sure most folks will even notice a difference. 🤷🏽‍♂️
    • While it does simplify the experience for users, it also means you have less transparency about which model is doing the work. (Check out episode 2 for the environmental impact of ChatGPT and the need for more transparency)
  • Email/calendar integrations existed before, but are now more conversational in how you can utilize them (let’s not give it access to our email and calendar 🫠)
  • Improvements in coding, writing, and reduced hallucinations are touted, but I honestly not sure how obvious they’ll be to the average user
    • Worth noting, hallucinations don’t refer to ChatGPT spitting out nonsense, hallucinations refers to ChatGPT saying things that sound correct but aren’t true. Hence why I’m not sure the average person will notice. ChatGPT is a great assistant for topics you know about (because then you know when what it’s telling you isn’t true). When using it to learn about topics outside of your expertise, double-check that work!

If you’d like to check out the OpenAI announcements yourself:

Overhyped or Underestimated?

As much as I love ChatGPT, I lean toward overhyped when it comes to mainstream coverage. While ChatGPT has enormous potential, it’s not coming for everyone’s job tomorrow. Let’s be wary of headlines that can be translated into: “Guy who stands to make a lot of money if AI succeeds, claims that AI will definitely succeed!”

The narrative that AI is replacing entire roles is often driven by:

  1. AI companies chasing investor interest and promising cost savings through automation
  2. CEOs (and people in general) having no idea what a job actually entails, leading to layoffs followed by rehiring when AI falls short. (Notice how folks say “ChatGPT is coming for X job”, never, “ChatGPT is coming for my job.”

What the Research Says

A recent Microsoft study analyzed 200,000 Bing Copilot conversations. The findings were as follows:

  • AI is being used more and more, primarily for information gathering, writing, and communication
  • It’s most applicable to knowledge and communication-heavy roles, less so for manual labor (#duh)
  • Even in applicable roles, AI usually supports rather than replaces the work
  • Historical precedent shows automation can shift responsibilities or even increase job demand (e.g., ATMs actually increased the number of bank tellers as banks opened up more branches at lower costs and tellers jobs then focus on more valuable relationship-building rather than processing deposits and withdrawals)

To summarize: AI is definitely being used but it’s really difficult to predict with any kind of certainty how it’s going to change things and who it’s going to replace.

Three Terms to Know (Because I Want Ya’ll to Be Informed Consumers)

  • Agents: AI that doesn’t just answer questions, it can do stuff for you – book a meeting, buy something, send a text. You give it some guardrails and it figures out how to do it so you spend less time telling it exactly what to do.
    • An example would be ChatGPT’s new email + calendar integration:
      • You could say, “Help me prep for my podcast guest next Thursday.” An AI agent connected to your email and calendar could find the booking, scan past emails with that guest, pull their bio from your files (you’d have to have given it access to a storage source like Drive/Dropbox), suggest interview questions based on recent news, and block time on your calendar to prep. You’re not walking it through each step, it’s handling the research, scheduling, and organization for you.
  • Agentic: Basically means capable of acting with a degree of autonomy to achieve a goal. Largely used in the context of ‘agentic model’ or ‘agentic AI’.
    • We’re being promised autonomous AI…and we’re not as close as the marketers would have us believe.
  • AGI (Artificial General Intelligence): AI that can understand, learn, and perform any intellectual task a human can, across different domains, not just the narrow things it was trained for.
    • AGI is the sci-fi version of AI a lot of people picture, one system that can learn and reason about pretty much anything the way a human can. Right now, tools like ChatGPT are narrow AI, really good at certain things, but not able to think or learn across every area of life. (Refer back to episode 1 for a deep dive on how ChatGPT works.)

My Final Thoughts

ChatGPT has a ton of potential and I think that it could be very very helpful and beneficial…and also, I think it’s a bit overhyped as it relates to the marketing geared towards the average user. I think it will change many things in the work force, but what exactly, and how, is really difficult to predict.

ChatGPT is powerful and evolving, but much of its marketing feels a bit “cart before the horse” in that consumers are being presented with a solution and being told to go find a problem.

Lastly, if you want to AI-proof/future-proof your job, my suggestion is to start using ChatGPT now. Experiment with it, see how it fits your workflow, and grow alongside the technology.

How I Used ChatGPT “Recently”

Each episode I include a section where I briefly discuss how I used ChatGPT that day/week.

“Today’s” use is a pseudo-throwback, but I wanted to share it while the podcast is still new.

In an effort to make this podcast as meta as possible, I used an AI music-generating software called Suno (yes, that is an affiliate link) to create the intro music. I used ChatGPT to help me refine the description of what I wanted the music to actually sound like, and then input that text into Suno. Several iterations later, followed by some rearranging of the generated tracks, I had the intro music you hear today (if you choose to listen to an episode).

That’s it for today’s episode. Always grateful for you.

Questions, comments, concerns, additions, subtractions, requests? Hit reply or head to the website (chatgptcurious.com) and use that contact form. I’d love to hear from you.

Catch you next Thursday.

Maestro out.

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AI Disclaimer: In the spirit of transparency (if only we could get that from these tech companies), this email was generated with a very solid alley-oop from ChatGPT. I write super detailed outlines for every podcast episode (proof here), and then use ChatGPT to turn those into succinct, readable recaps that I lightly edit to produce these Curious Companions. Could I “write” it all by hand? Sure. Do I want to? Absolutely not. So instead, I let the robot do the work, so I can focus on the stuff that I actually enjoy doing and you get the content delivered to your digital doorstep, no AirPods required. High fives all around.

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