In the age of automation and artificial intelligence, some jobs are less likely to be disrupted than others.
The report, titled “Working with AI: Measuring the Occupational Implications of Generative AI,” was published on July 22 to look at how the rapid adoption of generative AI could affect jobs.
Researchers analyzed 200,000 anonymous and privacy-scrubbed conversations between U.S. users and Microsoft’s Bing Copilot, the company’s premier generative AI tool, to find the most common work activities for which people seek AI assistance.
The report ranks jobs by an “AI applicability score,” which measures the frequency with which workers rely on artificial intelligence and the potential for that job to be replaced by AI.
Jobs with the highest AI applicability scores, or that use AI the most, were knowledge-based occupations that involve providing and communicating information, such as computer and mathematical fields, office and administrative support, and sales. “We find that people are using Copilot to provide services for the execution of knowledge work activities, and do so disproportionately often relative to the fraction of knowledge work in the workforce,” the report said.
Meanwhile, most of the jobs with the lowest AI applicability scores are blue-collar positions within the transportation, construction, service, medical, and dental fields. These jobs rely heavily on tasks that are not typically outsourced to AI, such as operating and repairing vehicles and equipment.
Here are the top 20 AI-safe jobs, according to the report:
Other jobs within the top 40 ranking include industrial truck and tractor operator, cement mason, dishwasher, highway maintenance worker, ship engineer, automotive glass installer, oral and maxillofacial surgeon, embalmer, painter/plasterer, hazardous materials removal worker, nursing assistant, and phlebotomist.
However, the researchers caution against drawing simple conclusions about job displacement. “It is tempting to conclude that occupations that have high overlap with activities AI performs will be automated and thus experience job or wage loss, and that occupations with activities AI assists with will be augmented and raise wages. This would be a mistake,” the report states.
The authors note that their data don’t capture the broader business impacts of new technology, which are often unpredictable. They point to ATMs as an example — while the machines automated core banking tasks, they actually led to an increase in bank teller jobs as banks opened more branches at lower costs and tellers shifted to relationship-building roles rather than processing transactions.
But even that example shows the complexity of technological disruption: while teller jobs initially increased after ATMs were introduced, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects teller employment will decline 15% from 2023 to 2033, compared to the whole of the job market growing 4%. The BLS cites automation as the driver of “fewer tellers per bank branch.” Today’s banking automation, of course, increasingly involves AI.
Source: Quartz
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