AI and the Future of Work By Brian Simpson
Their ABC has covered the issue of AI replacing jobs, making reference to the Future of Work report published by LinkedIn, and economist Karin Kimbrough. The take is one of optimism, that AI will enable employees to upskill and take a higher cognitive road. She sees plenty of opportunities, with developments such as ChatGPT or generative AI skills. Not so much for conventional jobs likeadministration, financial, legal, manufacturing, retail, media and wholesale roles, where there are repetitive tasks that AI will simply swallow up.
But IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva is more pessimistic about AI: "Roughly half the exposed jobs may benefit from AI integration, enhancing productivity.
"For the other half, AI applications may execute key tasks currently performed by humans, which could lower labour demand, leading to lower wages and reduced hiring.
"In the most extreme cases, some of these jobs may disappear."
This could lead to the generation of inequalities and rising social tensions. A rough ride is ahead.
"Is artificial intelligence (AI) going to take over your job?
Unfortunately, the answer might be "yes" if your work involves a lot of repetitive tasks that can be easily automated.
Workers in administration, financial, legal, manufacturing, retail, media and wholesale roles are most at risk, according to a Future of Work report published by LinkedIn.
However, the company's chief economist Karin Kimbrough is an optimist.
She believes AI will help most employees as they'll focus less on the mundane tasks — and more on the work that's genuinely interesting or requires a "higher cognitive load".
"It's really an opportunity for people to think about how to upskill themselves as opposed to fearing they're going to be replaced by a robot," Ms Kimbrough told ABC News.
2,000 per cent surge in AI jobsShe observed that the number of English-language job ads globally looking for applicants with ChatGPT or generative AI skills has risen exponentially (from quite a small number).
In 2023, the number of AI-related job listings was 21 times (or 2,000 per cent) higher than the year before.
"It just speaks to the employers' desire to start bringing in talent that can help them figure out how to integrate generative AI, whether it's ChatGPT or Copilot, into their own processes and systems," Ms Kimbrough said.
"So if last year was the year where businesses were trying to build awareness around the potential of this tool, this is the year where they're trying to build towards adoption of it."
The San Francisco-based economist says certain occupations will be "insulated" (or protected) from AI advancements, including locksmiths, physical therapists, construction workers, doctors and nurses.
As for the workers who'll benefit the most, she listed occupations in the tech sector like web designers, software engineers and user experience (UX) technicians.
Ms Kimbrough said: "These are occupations that rely on both human skills and skills that AI can replicate, which is the 'sweet spot'."
Will advanced AI lead to wage cuts?Highly skilled jobs in advanced economies (like Australia) are more likely to face "disruptions" from AI, according to research from the International Monetary Fund – though it didn't stipulate a time frame.
"In advanced economies, about 60 per cent of jobs may be impacted by AI," IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva wrote in a blog post in January.
"Roughly half the exposed jobs may benefit from AI integration, enhancing productivity.
"For the other half, AI applications may execute key tasks currently performed by humans, which could lower labour demand, leading to lower wages and reduced hiring.
"In the most extreme cases, some of these jobs may disappear."
Ms Georgieva also believes that AI is likely to worsen inequality across the world economy in most scenarios, "further stoking social tensions" unless there is political intervention.
LinkedIn's chief economist agrees that the rise of super-intelligent computers could lead to a fall in salaries for some workers — with an important caveat.
"If you don't evolve, then it could push down your wages," Ms Kimbrough said.
"But what's more likely to happen is that you're going to become more productive if you do evolve, learn to develop an AI fluency [and] get used to using tools like Copilot or ChatGPT."
"Productivity generally tends to result in higher wages, so actually, I would say it's the opposite," she said, in relation to most workers.
She predicts it will take five to seven years before most workers are expected to know how to use AI (just like they're expected to know how to use the internet now).
The problem with AI biasIt's no secret that employers generally loathe the incredibly time-intensive recruitment process.
Musk sues ChatGPT maker OpenAIFrom sifting through hundreds or thousands of CVs to interrogating the shortlisted applicants (often through several rounds of interviews), making the candidates sit an exam (for some jobs), running background checks, and rejecting the unsuccessful jobseekers.
In recent years, more companies are using AI to screen candidates (including their CVs and social media profiles), predict their likelihood of success and schedule interviews.
Some of the big names include IBM, Google, Amazon and Facebook.
While it's a huge time saver, there are concerns that AI may not necessarily find the best candidates at this early stage of development.
For instance, Amazon developed an AI tool — which it scrapped in 2018 — to recruit top talent. But its technology reportedly discriminated against women.
Amazon's AI recruitment system was reportedly trained to screen applicants by observing patterns in CVs over 10-years. However, most of the applicants were men, reflecting the male dominance of the tech sector.
So Amazon's computer models formed the conclusion that men were better candidates and penalised CVs that included the word "women" (for example, "women's basketball captain").
More recently, Google attracted controversy with its Gemini AI bot — which can generate images based on a user's text prompt.
For example, users have typed: "Create an image of the US founding fathers" and "German soldiers from the 1940s".
The results were historically inaccurate, as Gemini generated images of African-American men and Asian women wearing Nazi uniforms – and 18th-century American politicians who were non-white."
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