Artificial intelligence will affect about 60% of all jobs in the US — and worsen income and wealth inequality, the International Monetary Fund warned.
Advanced economies such as the US are at the greatest risk due to the prevalence of cognitive task-oriented jobs, the IMF said, cautioning that the disruptive technology could replace more than half the jobs available in regions that also include Canada, the UK, Japan, Germany, France and Italy.
Comparatively, AI exposure was estimated to impact 40% of jobs in emerging economies and 26% of positions in low-income countries.
“Automation…had the strongest effect on middle-skilled workers, [but] AI displacement risks extend to higher-wage earners,” the new analysis said.
IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva wrote in a blog post following the release of Sunday’s report that the rapidly-advancing technology provides opportunities to “help less experienced workers enhance their productivity more quickly.”
However, as AI is brought into the workplace, “we may see polarization within income brackets, with workers who can harness AI seeing an increase in their productivity and wages — and those who cannot falling behind,” Georgieva said.
Older workers are most at risk of losing their place to AI as they “may struggle with reemployment, adapting to technology, mobility and training for new job skills.”
In contrast, “younger workers who are adaptable and familiar with new technologies may also be better able to leverage the new opportunities.”
Georgieva called the findings “a troubling trend” that she urged policymakers to “proactively address to prevent the technology from further stoking social tensions.”
The IMF report was released as the world’s business and political leaders flew Monday to the Swiss resort town of Davos for the annual World Economic Forum.
AI is expected to be the hot topic, as The Post reported, at this year’s confab, which runs through Friday with the theme of “Rebuilding Trust.”
The US continues to weigh federal regulation of the burgeoning technology after a much-hyped summit in Washington, DC, last September. The European Union, meanwhile, reached a tentative deal in December that drew up AI guardrails.
Last April, Goldman Sachs warned generative AI — which is trained on different sets of data to learn pattern recognition — could impact as many as 300 million full-time jobs globally.
A month later, AI was blamed for nearly 4,000 Americans losing their jobs, according to the analytics firm Challenger, Gray, and Christmas, which cited market and economic conditions as well as mergers and acquisitions as key factors.
On the positive side, Goldman Sachs said that generative AI — which is seen in OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard and Microsoft’s Copilot — could boost GDP by as much as 7% thanks to an increase in productivity.
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon also touted AI’s “tremendous” impact on the world in an interview with Fox Business last week, calling the technology “crucial.”
“It’s going to change a tremendous amount of stuff in health care alone. It may come up with new compounds. It could do a better job diagnosing diseases, preventing diseases,” Dimon told Fox.
“God knows what it’s going to do for people. It may have some downsides. It’s very hard to figure out how you should regulate it, but it might eventually have to be some regulations around it,” he added.
One of the latest breakthroughs in AI has seen the medical industry rolling out “the world’s first AI doctor’s office,” which is slated to open this year in New York and other major US metros.
Called CarePod, the doctor’s office is actually a self-service cube where patients can be screened for issues relevant to diabetes, hypertension, and depression and anxiety, according to its maker, Forward.
The high-tech health stops will reportedly be installed in malls, gyms and offices for members who pay its $99-per-month fee.
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