AI’s Impact on Workers Was a Big Debate at This Year’s SXSW

At the screenings of Ryan Gosling’s new movie The Fall Guy and Sydney Sweeney’s Immaculate — headlining events of the first week of this year’s South by Southwest conference — a reel of speakers touting the merits of AI including Peter Deng, head of ChatGPT at OpenAI, was loudly booed by audiences.

In other halls of the annual Austin confab, which attracts over 300,000 people each year, the tone was one of heady optimism. Companies were spinning a positive narrative — pushing the idea that AI wouldn’t destroy jobs, but rather represented a once-in-a-generation opportunity to modernize a multitude of industries.

International Business Machines Corp. Chief ...