A deeper dive into global employment data and trends shows that AI will have the greatest impact on high-skilled jobs.
A job outlook report suggests that high-skilled occupations are most vulnerable to artificial intelligence, but its potential impact on employment remains to be seen.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released its latest employment report, focusing on labor demand and widespread shortages caused by persistently high inflation and global fiscal policies.
This chapter covers a key point, exploring why advances in artificial intelligence (AI) show no clear signs of slowing labor demand. Measurements of AI exposure show that existing tools show the greatest improvements in areas that require “non-routine cognitive tasks such as information sorting, memory, and perceptual speed.”
These are key qualities for occupations that require extensive training or higher education, the OECD said. The study also flagged "high-skilled white-collar jobs" as those most vulnerable to the impact of AI.
Business professionals, managers, CEOs, and science and engineering professionals were listed as the main occupations exposed to AI capabilities. Meanwhile, food preparation assistants, agricultural, forestry and fishery workers, cleaners and helpers were listed as the least affected by AI.
The publication also delves into the evidence on AI’s impact on the labour market, noting that advances in the space are so rapid that it is difficult to distinguish its output from that produced by humans.
The report states that the net impact of AI is not clear because while AI replaces some jobs, it can also stimulate labor demand by increasing productivity. AI also has the potential to create new tasks and thus, to some extent, new jobs.
“AI will replace labor in some jobs, but it will also create new jobs where human labor has a competitive advantage.”
At the same time, negative effects of AI advances on employment are harder to detect: data cited by the OECD show that employment of high-skilled workers has increased over the past decade compared to low-skilled workers.
The chapter also notes that its findings on the impact on specific job levels were obtained before the advent of large language models such as ChatGPT, and suggests that generative AI could further expand the range of tasks and jobs that can be automated.
As Cointelegraph previously reported, the number of job seekers in the artificial intelligence field has surged, with Google searches for AI jobs four times as many as searches for cryptocurrency jobs during the 2021 bull run.