Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you are acutely aware of generative AI. Certainly students are. Article after article contains accounts of how students are rightfully worried about how this disrupter technology will affect the types of jobs they will be prepared for.
And while no one can predict the future, the research seems clear: GenAI will profoundly affect knowledge workers, particularly those with higher levels of education. An in-depth report by the McKinsey Global Institute found it’s likely that any position involving decision making and collaboration will see significant impact, areas that had previously been untouched by automation.
Until now, technological advances focused on reducing the time to complete physical tasks. But because generative AI is language-based, it is designed to automate collecting and processing data. Its ability to understand and use common language will therefore affect work activities that involve communication, supervision, and documentation.
Among the professionals expected to be affected by generative AI are accountants, mathematicians, interpreters, and writers. The McKinsey researchers also project that 80 percent of jobs in which at least one task can be performed faster than tasks completed by a human will also take a hit. Therefore, positions requiring information processing—including jobs as diverse as PR specialists to court reporters to blockchain engineers—will also experience changes. The report predicts that even educators and creatives will face vast upheavals as a result of the technology.
This marks a major change. Before, new automation technology displaced workers with the lowest level of skills. Now, it’s coming for the rest of us.
The report conjectures that future jobs will be more skill-based rather than degree-based. Economists say this could be good news. Productivity has flattened over the years, and the population is growing older. The new technology can help mitigate those factors if workers learn new skills or upgrade old ones. Still, even now there are not enough workers with the skills to fill current job openings. Only if companies (and schools) can retool and retrain—no easy task considering the speed with which AI is moving—will society adapt, the researchers warn.
Another side to this fast-moving phenomenon is the still-to-be-defined risks that could influence AI’s growth and its impact on the workplace. Perhaps the most dangerous of these potentialities is the fact that generative AI could be used to create malicious content, cyberattacks, and disinformation. In addition, legal battles will inevitably erupt over intellectual property infringement and data protection. The authors of the report also say the technology might unintentionally disadvantage specific demographics, especially those who have typically relied on low- and middle-wage jobs, the number of which will probably decline. If all that is not enough, experts note that the technology itself is not always reliable.
No one’s crystal ball can accurately predict what will happen in the future. But one thing seems certain. Generative AI is going to be taking center stage for decades to come. We are all going to have to learn to get along.