Despite rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and growing concerns about mass job losses, a new report from Goldman Sachs suggests that fears of “AI job loss” are overstated, even though the technology is expected to significantly transform the labor market over the next decade.
According to the report, this study named “An AI Job Apocalypse” includes the opinions of economists and AI experts. They largely agree that although AI may lead to the loss of some jobs, over time it will also create new employment opportunities.
Joseph Briggs, senior global economist at Goldman Sachs, estimates that the changes brought about by AI could affect the jobs of more than 9 percent of the total workforce this decade – about 15 million workers in the US. However, he believes that this turmoil will last only for some time.
Briggs said, “Although we anticipate that people may have to leave their jobs because of AI, we expect this labor market disruption to be short-lived.” “The key to this thinking is that in the long run, AI will eliminate existing jobs as well as create many new ones.” Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor and Nobel laureate in economics Daron Acemoglu expects AI to have little adverse impact on employment in the next five years. However, he warned that what happens in the long run depends on whether companies use AI to upskill workers or simply to replace them. “Right now, AI is more likely to destroy jobs than create them… So, I expect an overall negative impact on the number of jobs in the coming years,” Acemoglu said. However, the scale of job losses will not be as large as some people are estimating. He said that if investment in AI remains focused primarily on replacing workers, the scale of job losses could be even more severe in the coming decade.
Neil Thompson, director of the FutureTech Research Project at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, said that the technical capabilities of AI alone do not guarantee large-scale job losses. “AI’s ultimate impact on the labor market may not be as large as its potential suggests,” Thompson commented. He said that reliability, access to data, cost and practical use are major barriers to its adoption. Describing the potential impact of AI, Thompson said the technology should be viewed as a “rising tide” rather than a “crashing wave”, to give businesses and employees enough time to adapt. The report also found that the impact of AI varies on different industries. Goldman Sachs economist Elsie Peng said that while AI is replacing workers in some sectors, it is increasing productivity in other sectors.
Peng said, “In fact, we have seen that the growth of AI has created jobs, but the jobs lost due to AI have not been fully compensated, which has some negative impact on the labor market.” The report said that younger and less experienced workers may face greater challenges in the future, especially in white-collar jobs affected by AI. However, Goldman Sachs economists Jessica Rindles and Pierfrancesco Mei say there is currently little evidence that AI has significantly harmed the employment opportunities for recent college graduates, but they are likely to be more affected by future changes than many other workers.
Overall, the report notes that while AI is expected to transform the workplace and increase productivity, past precedent shows that labor markets often adapt by creating new types of jobs – provided technology advances are accompanied by investments in people’s skills and efforts to create new jobs.