#ICYMI: AI could replace equivalent of 300-M jobs, report says

A report by Goldman Sachs revealed that an equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs could be replaced by Artificial Intelligence in the future.

File photo: ChatGPT-4

AI will be indistinguishable from human work?

BBC said in a report that Gaenerative AI, which is able to create content indistinguishable from human work, is "a major advancement.”

It noted a quarter of work tasks in the US and Europe could be replaced by AI.

The effect will also differ depending on the sector.

Some 46 percent of tasks in administrative and 44 percent in legal professions could be automated. Meanwhile, only 6 percent of construction and 4 percent of maintenance are seen to be affected.

On the other hand, the automation of some tasks is also seen to generate new jobs and lead to a productivity boom.

This could also increase the total annual value of goods and services produced globally by 7 percent.

Carl Benedikt Frey, future of-work director at the Oxford Martin School, Oxford University, said there is no way of finding out how many jobs will be affected by generative AI.

However, he said such technology could drive down wages for some jobs.

As an example, he told BBC that while ChatGPT allows more people with average writing skills to produce write ups, this could be a hurdle for journalists.

Journalists will therefore face more competition, which would drive down wages, unless we see a very significant increase in the demand for such work, he noted.

Over the next few years, generative AI is likely to have similar effects on a broader set of creative tasks, he pointed out.

The report also cited research saying that 60 percent of workers are in occupations that did not exist in 1940.

But other studies said technological change since the 1980s has displaced workers faster than it has created jobs.

And if generative AI is like previous information-technology advances, it could reduce employment in the near term, the Goldman Sachs report noted.

Speaking to BBC News, Torsten Bell, chief executive of the Resolution Foundation think tank, said "all firm predictions should be taken with a very large pinch of salt".

We do not know how the technology will evolve or how firms will integrate it into how they work, he said.

That's not to say that AI won't disrupt the way we work - but we should focus too on the potential living-standards gains from higher-productivity work and cheaper-to-run services, as well as the risk of falling behind if other firms and economies better adapt to technological change.

What do you think about this?

Via: BBC