ChatGPT collapses Kenya's academic ghostwriting industry, report finds

The Decoder reports that ChatGPT has wiped out a longstanding business in Kenya where workers wrote academic papers for foreign students. The industry employed large numbers of Kenyan freelancers who lost that income source as students turned to AI chatbots instead.

Why it matters: This is a concrete, already-occurred labor market disruption rather than a projection, hitting a specific outsourcing niche that AI text generation directly substitutes for. It's a useful counterpoint to more abstract debates about future AI job losses in wealthier economies, since the effect here has already fully played out.