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The impact of automation and AI on the job market

Recently, there has been a sudden surge in the availability of artificial intelligence (AI) applications and services. These AI solutions appear to have emerged unexpectedly and are now being widely used.

The initial introduction was ChatGPT, which rapidly gained popularity and became the fastest-growing consumer application in history. People from various fields, such as writers and coders, eagerly signed up to explore its capabilities. Subsequently, numerous other AIs were released, leveraging similar technology. These AI systems are capable of generating various media, including images, videos, and audio, based on brief text prompts.

Despite the potential societal benefits of the AI revolution, so been concerns about its impact on jobs, careers and livelihoods. The fear is that this technology could perform tasks previously done by humans at a significantly reduced cost.

This year has seen a plethora of research addressing the impact of AI and automation on the workforce. While experts acknowledge that machines will assume a significant portion of work, the situation is multifaceted. Ultimately, it is possible that this shift may result in the creation of improved job opportunities for workers.

What is artificial intelligence, and how does it differ from automation? Will AI take your job? Let’s take a closer look at this and consider the pros and cons of incorporating machines into our working lives.

What is Automation and AI?

Automation involves the use of machines to perform tasks instead of humans, often in a self-regulating manner. It has been used since the time of the industrial revolution to expedite processes in production lines. While initially prominent in manufacturing, automation is now increasingly prevalent in various contexts beyond factories, thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and computing.

Artificial intelligence is a broad term with diverse and occasionally conflicting definitions. Essentially, it refers to computer systems capable of thinking or acting like humans, or making rational decisions. In practice, an AI is a computer system that can process data and draw conclusions.

AI applications can be trained on extensive datasets, such as the entire Internet. This enables them to generate responses resembling human-like behaviour. Hence AI apps can now produce text that appears to be written by a human, or produce artwork that was previously created by human artists.

Automation and AI are therefore distinct terms – but they work together particularly well. Medical diagnostics are one example. AI algorithms trained on huge medical data sets can now identify illnesses more accurately and more quickly than human doctors, when looking at X-rays or blood test results. Automation is used to collect data, run the tests, and generate the reports. [LINK]

Machines can now automate more tasks that previously required human intervention, and also improve already automated systems. Modern AIs are even capable of learning and adapting. Currently they can’t do this as well as a human can. However, some experts believe we’re not far off from creating an artificial general intelligence (AGI) that can learn, think and potentially feel like a human.

Advantages of Automation and AI

Advances in technology have led to an increase in productivity and wealth, and in some cases a dramatic increase in living standards. For businesses, there are clear benefits to harnessing AI and automation. [LINK] They include:

  • Reduced costs: If repetitive tasks can be given to machines that don’t tire, that means savings on labour costs. They can also be used to identify inefficiencies within an organisation. This could have serious implications for management consultancies, which charge high fees for their expertise. [LINK] 
  • Higher productivity: Automated systems and processes are more efficient, as humans require rest and are prone to making mistakes.
  • More innovation: Machines are better than humans at repetitive tasks they are designed for. However humans still have a big advantage over machines – they can think creatively. Free from simple, repetitive tasks, human workers can put their creative thinking skills towards innovating.

Benefits of AI for workers

It’s not just companies that stand to benefit from AI and automation. Employees and jobseekers can also harness the power of machines to boost their careers.

For many types of work, you can use generative AIs such as ChatGPT as a sort of second brain. They can help with anything from idea generation and brainstorming, to drafting text for any type of content. That could be emails, social media posts, blog posts – even job applications. These tools are also great at processing and analysing large amounts of data, organising it, and identifying patterns. They can even be used to write or check code.

Getting to grips with AI will allow you to automate more tasks within your workflows. This will free up more time to focus on strategic or creative work. To make the most of the current capabilities of AI and automation, you need to learn how to collaborate effectively with the tools. To do this you can:

  • Take online courses which teach you the basics and show you how to use specific AI tools and platforms.
  • Read articles or watch YouTube videos about AI.
  • Attend industry-specific workshops or conferences on how to incorporate AI and automation into your workflows. These events provide a chance to network and get hands-on experience with the tools. You can also learn from others who are already collaborating successfully with AI.
  • Practice! Many of these tools are free or have free trials, so try them out to see if they provide value.

Challenges Posed by Automation and AI

Apps like ChatGPT have been a wakeup call for many people who perhaps didn’t realise quite how capable current AI technology is. People are asking: “If AI can be used to write entire articles, or code web pages, or conduct complex mathematical calculations, what does that mean for my career? Will robots take my job?”

And there is no escaping the fact that AI is impacting jobs right now and will only have a bigger impact as time goes on. Artists are already complaining that AI models that generate artwork in seconds have been trained on the work they spent their lives creating. There is even a class action lawsuit in the US brought by artists against AI image generators Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and DreamUp. [LINK]

A recent report put together by Goldman Sachs economists, who looked at the tasks of over 900 occupations in the US, suggested two thirds of those occupations were exposed to some extent to automation by AI. For some of those that are exposed to AI, they estimate that as much as a half of their workload could be replaced. AI, according to the company’s experts, could replace the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs. [LINK]

Changes of that magnitude clearly pose major societal and economic challenges. What happens to all those people whose jobs are replaced by machines is still very much a matter for debate.

Which jobs are at risk of AI?

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, released its own research this year which suggested 80% of workers could see their jobs impacted by AI. What sort of jobs and occupations are most at risk of being taken by machines? [LINK] 

They dug into the details of which jobs were most exposed to automation. It’s important to bear in mind that a job being “exposed” to automation doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t still need to be done by a human worker, and the research didn’t distinguish between

technology that increases effective labour input (labour-augmenting) or technology that may result in job losses (labour-displacing).

Listing occupations by percentage of tasks exposed to AI, these were the ones with the highest exposure:

  • Mathematicians (100%)
  • Tax Preparers (100%)
  • Financial Quantitative Analysts (100%)
  • Web and Digital Interface Designers (100%)
  • Survey Researchers (84.4%)
  • Writers and Authors (82.5%)
  • Interpreters and Translators (82.4%)
  • Public Relations Specialists (80.6%)
  • Animal Scientists (77.8%)

Preparing for the Future

If this scenario sounds frightening, a look at the history of technology’s impact on jobs might help. A study by economist David Autor found that 60% of the jobs done by workers today did not exist in 1940. This means around 85% of employment growth since then is explained by new positions created by technological progress. [LINK]

A McKinsey briefing argues that “there is work for everyone today and there will be work for everyone tomorrow, even in a future with automation”. To prepare for that future, governments need to prepare the future workforce, with improved teaching of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) in schools, and companies need to provide more opportunities for on-the-job training. [LINK]

Essentially, workers will need to adapt to working more closely with machines. But the technology is still no match for the human brain when it comes to innovation. Creative thinking is emerging as a crucial skill in the workforce, and jobs that require creativity are much more likely to grow as a percentage of the workforce by 2030 than those that don’t require it. [LINK] Therefore workers can prepare themselves for the future by focusing on developing their creative thinking.

The world of work is undergoing significant change due to AI and automation, but if history’s trend continues, technological advancement could lead to new jobs that harness the things humans do best.