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AI will shift tasks around,

Well, is artificial intelligence a job-killer or not? We keep hearing both sides, from projections of doom for many professions that will necessitate things such as universal basic income to help sidelined workers, to projections of countless unfilled jobs needed to build and manage AI-powered enterprises. For a worker losing his or her job to automation, knowing that an AI programming job is being created elsewhere is of little solace.

Perhaps the reality will be somewhere in between. An MIT report released at the end of last year states recent fears about AI leading to mass unemployment are unlikely to be realized. Instead, we believe thatlike all previous labor-saving technologiesAI will enable new industries to emerge, creating more new jobs than are lost to the technology, the reports authors, led by Thomas Malone, director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, conclude. But we see a significant need for governments and other parts of society to help smooth this transition, especially for the individuals whose old jobs are disrupted and who cannot easily find new ones.

The future of AI and job growth or losses may be nuanced, a recent report from BCG and Faethm suggests. Though these technologies will eliminate some jobs, they will create many others, the reports team of authors, led by BCGs Rainer Strack. Governments, companies, and individuals all need to understand these shifts when they plan for the future.

What needs to be understood? For starters, the net number of jobs lost or gained is an artificially simple metric to gauge the impact of digitization, Strack and his co-authors state. For example, eliminating 10 million jobs and creating 10 million new jobs would appear to have negligible impact. In fact, however, doing so would represent a huge economic disruption for the countrynot to mention for the millions of people with their jobs at stake.

Theres even a paradox in play. Computers tend to perform well in tasks that humans find difficult or time-consuming to do, but they tend to work less effectively in tasks that humans find easy to do, the report notes. Also, in many areas, technologies will improve the quality of work that humans do by allowing them to focus on more strategic, value-creating, and personally rewarding tasks.

In other words, AI cant take over many of the soft skills essential to businesses growth initiative, intuition, passion, and ability to sell ideas and concepts. Add that to more technical abilities needed to build and maintain AI and digital environments and keep them focused on what the business needs. In many sectors, severe shortages of skilled workers will mean that growth in demand for talent will be unmet, Strack and his co-authors state. This is particularly true for computer-related occupations and jobs in science, technology, engineering, and math, since technology is fueling the rise of automation across all industries. This is why the computer and mathematics job family group is likely to suffer by far the greatest worker deficits.

At the same time, there will also be increasing demand for jobs requiring compassionate human contact, such as health care, social services, and teaching, they add.

Along with the BCG-Faethms observations, it should be noted that AI cannot replicate the entrepreneurial skills that will be pulling together technology solutions and platforms to connect to the needs of markets. Humans are the innovators.

What to do? Strack and his team urge people to take charge of their professional development through lifelong learning. Individuals will have to take greater responsibility for their own professional development, whether that means through upskilling or reskilling, they state. Pay attention to sources of information and update skills accordingly, either by searching out high-quality providers of education or by charting your own course amid the vast amount of online-learning offers.

The BCG-Faethm team also makes the following recommendations from a corporate perspective:

Read more:
Artificial Intelligences Impact On Jobs Is Nuanced - Forbes