Faced with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), certain professions are more vulnerable. Thus, web designers and secretaries are more at risk than janitors, according to a study.
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That said, some workers will adapt better, depending on their age and transferable skills, researchers say.
No one has a crystal ball, but researchers at GovAI and the Brookings Institution, two research institutes, estimate that many of the most at-risk workers are also in the best position to find new jobs.
Futurology is hard, especially about the future
But history shows that economists’ predictions about the effects of new technologies on workers are often poor. Even researchers who study artificial intelligence at work caution that their assumptions are not foolproof.
“All the big questions about the impact of AI on the labor market remain unanswered,” admits Jed Kolko, a researcher at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Even at Anthropic, the company behind the AI robot Claude, we advocate “humility” – a rare attitude in Silicon Valley – regarding the reliability of analyzes on this subject.
PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
A roofer at work on a roof in Mirabel in 2019. Construction professions are generally considered not very vulnerable to AI, but a study estimates that certain types of white-collar workers have tools that will allow them, after their retraining, to be better off than manual workers.
Furthermore, there is no consensus.
Last year, Stanford University predicted that AI would affect young people in software development and customer service. But the Economic Innovation Group think tank believes, on the contrary, that these young people will fare better than those working in fields less exposed to AI such as physical training and roofing.
A flood of sometimes contradictory analyzes shows the yawning gap between what we know and the need to prepare for the future.
We know at least two things. First, no scenario documented so far predicts the layoff of all workers, economists say. Then, white-collar workers are more in the crosshairs of AI than workers and artisans.
Vulnerability coefficient
Sam Manning and Tomas Aguirre, researchers at GovAI, took an innovative approach: They first measured exposure to AI for more than 350 occupations, looking at how many tasks a worker can do more effectively with AI.
Their estimates reveal that skills used in computer programming, marketing, financial analysis, and customer service largely match AI capabilities. So, in theory, these jobs could be more easily replaced by machines.
The two researchers went further and sought to quantify how easily these workers could transition to other high-paying jobs.
Conclusion: people with a higher level of education and varied experience will be able to change professions, especially if they are financially comfortable, are under 55 years old and live in regions where employment is abundant.
Web designer and secretary jobs are highly exposed to AI, but secretaries are among the 6.1 million American employees considered both highly exposed to AI and having the lowest capacity to adapt, MM said. Manning and Aguirre.
According to them, the majority of workers affected by AI can bounce back. But a minority might have more difficulty finding a new job.
Women more exposed
Women represent around 86% of this more vulnerable group, estimate the two researchers.
PHOTO FROM WIKIPEDIA
Telephone operators in Seattle, Washington, in 1952. This type of job, held primarily by women, disappeared with automation and these employees had to retrain in other paid professions.
If the past is any guide to the future, office work – a predominantly female field – could suffer during the AI revolution, believes Allison Elias, professor at the University of Virginia business school.
“These people are really vulnerable. They won’t have much influence on how AI is used, and their reskilling options will be quite low,” she warns.
Economists point out that we are in uncharted territory: previous technological revolutions, such as electrification and computing, eliminated certain types of jobs but created new ones, also leading to unexpected economic growth.
Barely a decade ago, a major study predicted that computing would destroy nearly half of all jobs: ATMs would eliminate bank tellers, player pianos would kill the piano profession. So many erroneous predictions.
Conversely, it was not anticipated that the smartphone would create new jobs in social media marketing. And you’re probably not experiencing the 15-hour work week that economist John Maynard Keynes predicted in 1930.
“We’re not very good at predicting how technological change will affect the labor market,” says Martha Gimbel, director of the Budget Lab at Yale University. No one could have predicted that the invention of electricity would lead to the job of elevator boy, and that a later innovation – “a button for each floor,” she said – would eliminate this type of employment.
James Feigenbaum, an economist at Boston University, believes that AI will not be much different for workers than previous technological revolutions. Electricity, the internal combustion engine and the internet were radically transformative technologies, he says, and “it didn’t eliminate all the jobs.”
This article was published in the Washington Post.
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