More than a quarter of all jobs across the world’s wealthiest countries are in industries where artificial intelligence could replace many human workers, including in low and mid-level skill positions, according to a new report Tuesday, as increasingly human-like AI systems put the world on the brink of an “AI revolution.”
A two-armed robot called "ADAM" prepares a cup of coffee for a customer at a coffee shop in ... [+]
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a 38-member bloc including the U.S. and Canada, found 27% of the region’s labor force works in occupations at a high risk of being replaced by AI, even though adoption of the technology remains fairly low as the technology is in its infancy.
Those jobs run the gamut from construction to farming, fishing and forestry, as well as other jobs including manufacturing and transportation to a “lesser extent,” according to the report.
High-skill positions are at the lowest risk of being replaced by AI, the report said.
The report comes as employees increasingly turn to human-like chatbots, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, following its release in November, and as competitors including Google introduce their own versions of the highly-intelligent generative systems.
OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann called the progression of AI a “technological watershed,” urging lawmakers to establish long-term policies on the use of AI in workplaces while “appropriately managing the downside risks.”
ChatGPT’s public release in November turned heads around the world over the system’s impressive, and at times disturbing, likeness to human-generated functions, quickly solving code, writing poetry and college-level essays. AI chatbots like ChatGPT work by using a language technology trained on a vast supply of data, outputting detailed answers in a matter of seconds. Its critics, however, have sounded the alarm for months around potential side effects of introducing the technology into the workplace—where employees have feared their jobs could be replaced—as well as at high schools and colleges, where concerns have mounted around students using the programs to cheat. A group of tech officials including billionaire Twitter owner Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak penned a letter in March urging developers to hit the brakes on AI systems, warning of an “out-of-control race” to create increasingly advanced systems. Roughly 60% of employees in an OECD survey last year said they worry their jobs will be replaced by AI over the next 10 years. Meanwhile, tech giant IBM said in May it plans to stop hiring for certain non-customer-facing jobs that can be done by artificial intelligence.
85 million. That’s how many jobs the World Economic Forum estimated would be replaced by AI by 2025, according to an October 2020 jobs report, though the report also indicated another 97 million new jobs would be created as a result of AI over the same time period.
Participants in OECD’s survey were not completely skeptical of AI in the workplace. Some indicated AI can be used to “reduce tedious and dangerous tasks,” improving workplace safety. The introduction of chatbots is also far from the first time employers have been concerned about losing their jobs to machines as automated processes increasingly replace humans at grocery store checkout lines, on manufacturing lines, in fast-food restaurants and at highway toll booths. A Harvard Business Review article published in March asserted AI, despite its benefits, fails to replace humans’ ability to be “intuitive, emotional, or culturally sensitive, meaning AI can be “perfectly suited” in routine and repetitive tasks, but less apt to replicate humans’ critical thinking.
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