AI Unlikely to Take Over Most Jobs, however Clerical Work Faces Threat of Automation: UN Research

Generative AI most likely won’t take over most individuals’s jobs solely however will as a substitute automate a portion of their duties, liberating them as much as do different duties, a UN examine stated on Monday. It warned, nevertheless, that clerical work would seemingly be the toughest hit, probably hitting feminine employment more durable, given girls’s over-representation on this sector, particularly in wealthier nations. An explosion of curiosity in generative AI and its chatbot functions has sparked fears over job destruction, related to people who emerged when the shifting meeting line was launched within the early 1900s and after mainframe computer systems within the Fifties.

However, the examine produced by the International Labour Organization concludes that: “Most jobs and industries are only partially exposed to automation and are thus more likely to be complemented rather than substituted by AI.”

This implies that “the most important impact of the technology is likely to be of augmenting work”, it provides.

The occupation prone to be most affected by GenAI – able to producing textual content, photos, sounds, animation, 3D fashions, and different information – is clerical work, the place a couple of quarter of duties are extremely uncovered to potential automation, the examine says.

But most different professions, like managers and gross sales employees, are solely marginally uncovered, it stated.

Still, the UN company’s report warned that the influence of generative AI on affected employees may nonetheless be “brutal”.

“Therefore, for policymakers, our study should not read as a calming voice, but rather as a call for harnessing policy to address the technological changes that are upon us,” it stated. 

© Thomson Reuters 2023