Workforce must 'upgrade' job skills to survive AI disruption

Yahoo

3 days ago

Meta Platforms (META) aims to fully automate advertising with artificial intelligence (AI) by the end of next year, according to the Wall Street Journal, as tech companies embrace AI-driven workforce changes.
Darrell West, senior fellow at Brookings Institution's Center for Technology Innovation, joins Catalysts to discuss AI's impact on job losses, retraining and upskilling needs, and broader economic effects from the technology.
Also read up on Meta's 20-year nuclear power deal with Constellation Energy (CEG) starting in 2027.
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Meta plans to fully automate advertising with AI by the end of next year, according to The Wall Street Journal. The news is part of a broader shift toward implementing AI in the tech workforce, a shift that Anthropic CEO says could wipe out 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs over the next five years. Here to discuss, Darrell West, Brookings Institution senior fellow in the Center for Technology Innovation and author of "The Future of Work: Robots, AI, and Automation." Great to speak with you here this morning, Darrell. Talk to me about how you would define AI's impact on the workforce going forward.
Well, Madison, I think you're right in the intro in the sense there are going to be substantial job losses coming from AI. Uh, we already are seeing it in entry-level positions. Certainly, administrative tasks are easy to automate. Some of the tech companies recently have had layoffs. 40% of the people laid off have been coders. So even in the software area, an area that we used to think was safe from automation is no longer going to be safe.
And talk to me then about sort of the net effect of AI on the workforce here. Is there a potential, like there is with every single technological disruption, of new jobs being created that those coders could then go get employed with?
There certainly will be new jobs created based on some of the emerging technologies. But the problem is what we call the mismatch problem, which is the skills needed for some of the new jobs are skills that many of the people being laid off are not necessarily going to have. So it's really going to place an emphasis on job retraining. People are going to have to upgrade their job skills. And so we're really going to have to devote much more attention to retraining the people for those new jobs that are going to be created.
What do you think about the net inflation impact of all of this? Is it near-term inflationary because we have to put a lot of resources into investing in AI, or is it disinflationary because we have a lot of job loss as a result?
Well, I think workers are going to end up in a worse position in the sense that, certainly, the people who are being laid off, uh, given the skills that they have, it will be hard for them to find, uh, jobs because they may look in other companies or in other organizations. Those companies are going to be doing exactly the same thing. So it really shows that people are going to have to upgrade their skills. Uh, it's going to impact the economy, and the numbers could be quite substantial.