Are predictions of AI-driven mass unemployment greatly exaggerated?
PARIS: Predictions of imminent AI-driven mass unemployment are likely overblown, but employers will seek workers with different skills as the technology matures, a top executive at global recruiter ManpowerGroup told AFP at Paris's Vivatech trade fair.
The world's third-largest staffing firm by revenue ran a startup contest at Vivatech in which one of the contenders was building systems to hire out customisable autonomous AI "agents", rather than humans.
Their service was reminiscent of a warning last month from Dario Amodei, head of American AI giant Anthropic, that the technology could wipe out half of entry-level white-collar jobs within one to five years.
For ManpowerGroup, AI agents are "certainly not going to become our core business any time soon," the company's Chief Innovation Officer Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic said.
"If history shows us one thing, it's most of these forecasts are wrong."
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