AI threat to your job: Is it coming from AI directly, or from competition with AI skills?

(TND) — Nearly half of professionals in a new survey from Microsoft and LinkedIn said they are worried artificial intelligence will replace their jobs.

And over half of the survey respondents who use AI at work said they worry that using it on important tasks makes them look replaceable, according to the Work Trend Index survey of thousands of knowledge workers – those who typically work at a desk.

Two-thirds of leaders in the survey said they wouldn’t hire someone without AI skills. About 70% would rather hire a less experienced person with AI skills than a more experienced person without them, according to the report.

Laurence Liew, the director for AI innovation at AI Singapore, recently spoke about the importance of AI-skilled workers.

“AI is not going to replace you,” Liew reportedly said during a panel discussion. “You’re going to be replaced by someone who uses AI to outperform you.”

Molly Kinder, a fellow at Brookings Metro and an expert on how innovations can impact the labor market, said Tuesday that Liew’s statement is an “oversimplification” of the impact of AI on the jobs market.

“Technology impacts jobs in many ways,” she said. “It’s very nuanced, and in some instances, AI actually does take people’s jobs.”

AI will disrupt jobs. It will change roles. And sometimes positions will be eliminated, she said.

But Kinder said AI, specifically generative AI, at this moment isn’t an imminent threat to most jobs.

“My colleagues and I at the Brookings Institution have analyzed some data from OpenAI, and our big takeaway is that at this phase, with this level of technology, we’re more likely to see augmenting impacts than automation impacts,” she said. “So, I think it’s just simply not true that the majority of people are about to see their job go away.”

Kinder echoed part of Liew’s statement, that it’s really up to workers to find ways that AI can improve their jobs.

The report from Microsoft and LinkedIn found that 75% of global knowledge workers are using generative AI. Use has nearly doubled in the last six months, according to the report.

Kinder said the technology has the potential to make jobs faster, better or even more enjoyable.

Last summer, the Pew Research Center broke down which types of tasks and skills could either be replaced by AI or helped the most by the technology.

From that, it determined that about a fifth of workers are in jobs that are highly exposed to AI.

Workers with more education and higher earnings are more exposed to AI, the Pew Research Center determined.

Analytical skills are more important in jobs with more exposure to AI, the Pew Research Center said. Those include the areas of critical thinking, writing, science and mathematics.

Kinder said there seems to be growing agreement that back-office work and customer service jobs are riper for automation and cost-cutting with the help of AI.

But she said a lot of jobs could simply see heavy augmentation from AI. Those could include finance, engineering, computer programming, law, business, operations and marketing, she said.

Where it’s hardest for computers to outperform humans is with in-person interactions.

An AI system can’t replace a lawyer presenting an argument to a jury or a salesperson taking a client out to lunch to drum up new business.

“That kind of in-person communication and interpersonal skills are extremely valuable, and the machine can’t do that,” Kinder said.

A previous Gallup survey found that 75% of people think AI will decrease the number of jobs over the next decade.

Will companies hire less if AI makes their workers more productive?

“There’s a lot of hope and a lot of hype that this could be a transformational technology that’s going to unleash really vast productivity gains,” Kinder said. “We simply don’t have the data yet to suggest whether or not that’s true.”

Some companies will see productivity gains as a way to cut their head counts.

Others will want more of a good thing.

“Do we want more with less? Do we want more with more? And some of this is really about the sort of market response and how much … the economy demands of different types of labor services,” she said.

Generative AI is still not as good as most workers in their jobs, Kinder said.

And most people do a combination of tasks in their job, which means AI might not be a direct replacement for them.

Kinder said AI has the potential to be as disruptive as some of our greatest technological advances of the past, from computers to cars.

“But it’s not guaranteed,” she said. “And I think it absolutely will require the technology to improve significantly.”