Latest news with #jobdisruption
ABC News
5 days ago
- Business
- ABC News
AI could be the government's productivity answer. But getting there will mean more disruption
For many Australians, artificial intelligence is already disrupting their work. Among them is voice actor Colin Cassidy, who after decades of building his career said he had his voice cloned without his consent. "It's a little bit like a redundancy which is very stressful from a mental health point of view," he said. "But it goes deeper because it's your biometric data, it's part of you." Mr Cassidy estimated his booking numbers have reduced by 30 per cent due to AI. He said the voice-over industry, which is already being hit hard by cloning, is the "canary in the coal mine". "AI is here to stay and it's going to continue to develop and put more voice overs out of work, which is a tragedy." While the full extent of future job losses from AI is not known, the World Economic Forums expects at least 9 million jobs could be displaced globally, and the nature of work for even more could change dramatically. A report from Jobs and Skills Australia this week however found AI was more likely to augment human work than replace it, highlighting the importance of people having the right digital and AI skills for a modern labour market. Modelling by non-profit organisation The Social Policy Group last year found a third of the Australian workforce could be disrupted by 2030 due to the adoption of AI. Impacted industries included agriculture, mining, manufacturing, retail trade, telecommunications and real estate services, as AI streamlines operations, automates tasks and enables data-driven decision-making. Australian businesses are already adopting AI through automating technology such as forklifts, irrigation systems and check-out systems in retail stores and supermarkets. In manufacturing, robots are increasingly helping with tasks such as assembling, packaging and distribution. AI is also listing properties, screening tenants and managing leases in real estate, as well as performing document reviews and legal research — tasks typically done by paralegals and junior lawyers. But it's these disruptions that could deliver a $116 billion productivity boost to Australia's economy, according to the Productivity Commission's estimates. Nicholas Davis is a co-director of the Human Technology Institute at the University of Technology Sydney, whose research focuses on ethical and responsible use of AI. He said potential job losses due to AI fall into two categories. "One category is where your job has a bunch of tasks that are relatively repetitive and routine and therefore can be understood and done by digital systems," Mr Davis said. "The second is people who do things that are relatively complex and valuable but for which we see specific AI applications coming out now, like voice cloning." Mr Davis said the more diverse a worker's job tasks are, the better their protection from AI. "The more that is a mix of interactive, human facing, client facing, public facing activity, the more you're probably less worried at this stage," he said. Ahead of the federal government's productivity round table next week, the Productivity Commission warned over-regulation could stifle AI's multi-billion-dollar economic potential. At the time, Treasurer Jim Chalmers welcomed the report, calling AI a "game changer" for the Australian economy. "We can chart a middle course that makes our workers and our people and our industries' beneficiaries, not victims of technological change," he said. Skills and Training Minister Andrew Giles said the government was focused on supporting Australians to make the most of the benefits of AI, "including in how people can upskill to use it in their day-to-day work". "We recognise this is a deeply complex issue. We are stepping through these issues carefully, ensuring that our approach to AI regulation is aligned with Australian values, and benefits Australians," Mr Giles said. In the past, technological advances have seen businesses expand, such as the introduction of ATMs. "The fear was that would take away bank teller jobs and it actually ended up increasing employment," Mr Davis said. "By making it easier to withdraw money, it lowered the cost of having the branch. "It meant there was an expansion of other services, including lending mortgages and other aspects that increased net employment." But Mr Davis warned it would be a mistake to assume that all productivity benefits would materialise. "We're really focused on hoping that all these benefits will occur and trying to push off the thought that maybe some of it won't," Mr Davis said. There are growing calls from unions and creative industries for better regulation of the technology to protect jobs. Unions will head into next week's round table calling for mandatory enforceable agreements that would ensure employers consult with staff before new AI technologies can be introduced. Mr Davis's research found businesses can harness greater benefits from AI if they include workers in the adoption process. "Worker engagement around AI is not a nice to have ... it's actually an essential component of realising the productivity gains from the new technology." He said there were currently "huge gaps" in privacy law and copyright intellectual law that needed to be filled. "Far from being a barrier to innovation, the organisations I speak to want regulatory certainty, they want to know what the rules are, they want to know that makes them trustworthy as they use AI," he said. "AI is a really powerful and transformative set of technologies. "It would be silly of us to say let's just let it rip without saying, 'Hold on a second, what benefits do we want and how can we best get those?'" Earlier this month former industry minister Ed Husic also advocated for an AI Act that could help to safeguard against its risks. But Tech Council of Australia chair Scott Farquhar has urged the government not to regulate as a first resort. Earlier this week, he said many of the harms that are known now are covered by existing regulation. He expected some jobs would be lost, such as call centre workers, but said jobs could also be created out of AI and an increased number of data centres. "I'm asking the unions to help us train new jobs and let's get them done faster so it's not a four-year apprenticeship," he told 730. "I'm asking unions to help us evolve for jobs there are less of, how do we get those people into new jobs?" Mr Cassidy has adapted to AI by engaging in more performative work, and is also exploring ethically cloning his voice. He wants to see specific AI regulation as well as support for artists when it comes to enforcement of existing or future laws. "I don't have the budget to take this to court and go the full mile," Mr Cassidy said. "There are hundreds of situations like mine that need financial help, need legal help, need sponsorship in some way to actually communicate the depth, length and breadth of this problem."
Yahoo
14-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Are you worried about the impact of AI on the jobs market? Have your say
UK companies are cutting back on hiring for jobs that are more likely to be disrupted by artificial intelligence (AI), a study has found. The analysis by consultancy firm McKinsey & Co found that the overall number of job postings were down 31% in the three months to May, compared to the same period in 2022, according to a Bloomberg report. However, the drop in postings was found to be the most pronounced in roles expected to be more impacted by the rollout of AI, such as tech or finance. Listings for these roles declined 38% in that three month period, which nearly double the fall found elsewhere. Tera Allas, a senior adviser at McKinsey, reportedly said: "The anticipation of significant – albeit uncertain – future productivity gains, especially as the technology and its applications mature, is prompting companies to review their workforce strategies and pause aspects of their recruitment." Read more: Bank of England could cut interest rates faster if jobs market slows, Bailey says Some major companies have already suggested that their workforce will be impacted by AI. For example, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy recently warned that the rollout of AI across the tech company would likely result in jobs cuts in the coming years. Meanwhile, BT Group (BT-A.L) CEO Allison Kirkby said last month that advances in AI could deepen job cuts already underway at the telecoms company. McKinsey's study comes as data points to a broader slowdown in the UK jobs market. Figures from the Office for National Statistics, released in June, showed that the UK's unemployment rate rose to 4.6% in April, the highest level since July 2021. Meanwhile, an early estimate of payrolled employees for May 2025 fell by 109,000, or 0.4%. In addition, the ONS data showed that the estimated number of vacancies in the UK fell by 63,000 on the quarter, to 736,000 in March to May 2025. Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey said in an interview with The Times, published on Sunday, that the central bank ready to lower interest rates further if the UK job market begins to show clear signs of slowing down. Are you worried about the impact of AI on the jobs market? Vote in the poll below. Yahoo UK's poll of the week lets you vote and indicate your strength of feeling on one of the week's hot topics. After the poll closes, we'll publish and analyse the results each Friday, giving readers the chance to see how polarising a topic has become and if their view chimes with other Yahoo UK readers. Read more: Bank of England's Bailey opposes cornerstone of Rachel Reeve's pension plans Chinese EVs take off in the UK as BYD closes in on Tesla How to start investing with an employee share schemeError in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Forbes
28-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Yes, You May Lose Your Job To AI. So What Will You Do About It?
The Silicon Valley gospel has been preached from every conference stage: "You won't lose your job to AI, but to someone who learns to use AI." It's a comforting narrative that keeps executives sleeping soundly while their HR departments frantically roll out "AI literacy" programs. But this conventional wisdom misses the fundamental transformation happening right under our noses. Putting the notion of "AI won't take your job" into context. The real disruption isn't about individual workers becoming AI-savvy. It's about the obsolescence of entire job categories as AI becomes exponentially more capable, efficient, and effective at core business functions. The Exponential Reality Check Here's what should terrify you: Today is the worst AI will ever be. Several current AI models have surpassed the average IQ of humans. Most people have an average IQ between 85 and 115. Overall, about 98% of people have a score below 130, with the 2% above that are considered 'very superior'. With the latest versions of OpenAI's o3, Anthropic's Claude 4 Sonnet, and Google's Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental all well above average human intelligence scores, we now have genius-level AI. Ranking The Smartest AI Models by IQ Level But that's just the beginning. AI capability is roughly doubling every six months. Let's do the math and be a bit more conservative and assume it doubles every year: I share this just for illustrative purposes. Humans typically think in a linear fashion. It's hard for us to think exponentially. And it's hard to not think this is all 'science fiction' and will happen years in the future. No. This is happening now. This is compound growth in action. When AI can already write better marketing copy than most marketers, analyze data faster than any analyst, and code more efficiently than many developers TODAY - imagine what happens when it's 32 times more capable in just five years. The Job Container Is Breaking For decades, companies have organized human effort into neat packages called "jobs"—performing tasks in predefined roles with specific responsibilities, reporting structures, and compensation bands. This industrial-age framework worked when work was predictable, hierarchical, and required sustained human attention. AI is obliterating this model. When artificial intelligence can write code in minutes, draft legal briefs in seconds, and generate marketing campaigns instantly, traditional job boundaries become arbitrary constraints. Why maintain a "Marketing Manager" role when AI can execute campaigns while a strategic thinker provides direction? Why preserve "Financial Analyst" positions when AI can process datasets that would take humans months to review? Think this is hype? Check out the latest release that dropped this week from HeyGen, an AI-powered video creation platform that allows users to generate videos with AI avatars, text-to-speech, and customizable templates. They just announced this week the HeyGen Video Agent, the first prompt-native creative engine designed to transform a single idea into a complete, publish-ready video asset. Whether that's a TikTok ad, a YouTube hook, a product explainer, or a quickfire UGC clip, the video is created by AI in seconds. The tool looks amazing, and it will surely be compelling to marketers at small companies to large global enterprises. However, this is another nail in the coffin for a creative agency or production company that was providing those services. We're entering the era of agentic content creation where intelligent systems don't just assist with ... More editing, but act on your behalf to create high-quality videos, end to end. Reading Between The Lines: The Amazon Example The companies that survive won't be those that train existing jobholders to use AI tools. They'll be the ones that completely reimagine how work gets done. On June 17th, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy published a memo with "Some thoughts on Generative AI." While highlighting AI's incredible applications across the company, he dropped this bombshell: 'As we roll out more Generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done. We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs. It's hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.' This should be a wake-up call. It's a direct admission that AI will eliminate jobs, and it should terrify anyone doing repetitive or process-driven work. Amazon is just the latest in a number of companies that are signaling what is to come slowly, carefully, and publicly. Sure for now it's mostly tech companies like Duolingo, Klarna, and Shopify that are talking about being 'AI first'. In the case of Shopify, CEO Tobi Lütke told employees that teams must demonstrate why AI cannot fulfill a role before requesting to hire a human. This effectively positions AI as the default option for many tasks. This AI first approach might start in tech, but it won't end there. The Rise of Liquid Labor Forward-thinking organizations are moving beyond "jobs" toward what I call 'Liquid Labor'. In a hybrid human-AI workforce, Liquid Labor is the fluid combinations of human creativity, AI capabilities, and automated processes that adapt in real-time to business needs. Consider Netflix. They don't have traditional "TV Programming Executive" jobs. Instead, they have data scientists, content strategists, and algorithm specialists working in fluid teams that constantly reconfigure based on viewer behavior and market opportunities. This shift challenges everything: OK, this is scary. So What Should I Do? The obvious answer is to upskill yourself and learn how to use all of these AI tools. Are you using not just one model (say ChatGPT), but experiment with multiple models from Claude to Perplexity to CoPilot to Gemini to Grok. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, so learn what works best for you. This is table-stakes, though. Here's a more candid survival guide: Double down on uniquely human capabilities that AI can't replicate (yet): Develop higher-order thinking abilities that allow you to adapt and learn faster than AI can optimize for your replacement, focusing on skills that help you navigate complexity and change rather than specific technical competencies: Become the critical bridge between AI systems and human needs: Forge a unique professional identity: Urgently diversify your income streams and build wealth-generating assets while you still have earning power: Cultivate deep, value-creating relationships as your unique network of human connections becomes one of your most defensible and irreplaceable assets in the AI era: The Time to Act Is Now Most people think they have years to adapt. They're wrong. By the time AI visibly threatens your job, it's already too late. The exponential curve means: The window for repositioning yourself is now, while you still have leverage, income, and options. The transformation from jobs to liquid labor is already here. The choice isn't between learning AI or losing your job. It's between fundamentally reimagining your career or watching it become obsolete. Those who act now - building unique capabilities, creating new value propositions, and positioning themselves at the human-AI interface - won't just survive. They'll thrive in ways we can't yet imagine. Those who wait, believing that disruption is still years away, will discover that no amount of prompt engineering can compete with exponentially improving AI that works 24/7, never gets sick, and improves while you sleep. The question isn't whether this transformation will affect you, but whether you'll adapt fast enough. Now is the time to get AI ready.
Yahoo
23-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The debate over whether AI will create or take over jobs is heating up. Here's what AI leaders are saying.
Tech leaders are divided on whether AI will cause mass job destruction or create new roles. Anthropic's Dario Amodei said AI may cut 50% of white-collar roles. Nvidia's Jensen Huang disagrees. From Sam Altman to Demis Hassabis, here's what AI leaders are saying about the AI jobs debate. AI leaders are split on whether AI will take over jobs or create new roles that mitigate disruption. It's a long-running debate — but one that has been heating up in recent months. While tech leaders seem to agree that AI is shaking up jobs, they are divided over timelines and scale. From Jensen Huang to Sam Altman, here is what some of the biggest names in tech are saying about how AI will impact jobs. Dario Amodei AI may eliminate 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs within the next five years. That was the stark warning from Dario Amodei, the CEO of AI startup Anthropic. "We, as the producers of this technology, have a duty and an obligation to be honest about what is coming. I don't think this is on people's radar," Amodei told Axios in an interview published in May. He said he wanted to share his concerns to get the government and other AI companies to prepare the country for what's to come, adding that unemployment could spike to between 10% and 20% in the next five years. He said that entry-level jobs are especially at risk, adding that AI companies and the government need to stop "sugarcoating" the risks of mass job elimination in fields including technology, finance, law, and consulting. Jensen Huang Huang, the CEO of chipmaker Nvidia, was withering when asked about Amodei's comments. "I pretty much disagree with almost everything he says," Huang said. Amodei "thinks AI is so scary," but only Anthropic "should do it," he continued. An Anthropic spokesperson told BI that Amodei had never made that claim. "Do I think AI will change jobs? It will change everyone's — it's changed mine," Huang told reporters on the sidelines of Vivatech in Paris in June. He also said that some roles would disappear, but said that AI could also unlock creative opportunities. Yann LeCun Yann LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist, wrote a short LinkedIn post just after Huang dismissed Amodei, saying, "I agree with Jensen and, like him, pretty much disagree with everything Dario says." LeCun has previously taken a more optimistic stance on AI's impact on jobs. Speaking at Nvidia's GTC conference in March, LeCun said that AI could replace people but challenged whether humans would allow that to happen. "I mean basically our relationship with future AI systems, including superintelligence, is that we're going to be their boss," he said. Demis Hassabis Demis Hassabis, the cofounder of Google DeepMind, said in June that AI would create "very valuable jobs" and "supercharge sort of technically savvy people who are at the forefront of using these technologies." He told London Tech Week attendees that humans were "infinitely adaptable." He said he'd still recommend young people study STEM subjects, saying it was "still important to understand fundamentals" in areas including mathematics, physics, and computer science to understand "how these systems are put together." Geoffrey Hinton You would have to be "very skilled" to have an AI-proof job, Geoffrey Hinton, the so-called "Godfather of AI," has said. "For mundane intellectual labor, AI is just going to replace everybody," Hinton told the "Diary of a CEO" podcast in June. He flagged paralegals as at risk, and said he'd be "terrified" if he worked in a call center. Hinton said that, eventually, the technology would "get to be better than us at everything," but said some fields were safer, and that it would be, "a long time before it's as good at physical manipulation. "So a good bet would be to be a plumber," he added. Sam Altman "AI is for sure going to change a lot of jobs" and "totally take some jobs away, create a bunch of new ones," Altman said during a May episode of "The Circuit" podcast. The OpenAI CEO said that although people might be aware that AI can be better at some tasks, like programming or customer support, the world "is not ready for" humanoid robots. "I don't think the world has really had the humanoid robots moment yet," he said, describing a scenario where people could encounter "like seven robots that walk past you" on the street. "It's gonna feel very sci-fi. And I don't think that's very far away from like a visceral 'oh man, this is gonna do a lot of things that people used to do,'" he added. Speaking at the Snowflake Summit in June, Altman said AI agents are already acting like junior employees. Read the original article on Business Insider
Yahoo
21-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Bosses want you to know AI is coming for your job
SAN FRANCISCO - Top executives at some of the largest American companies have a warning for their workers: Artificial intelligence is a threat to your job. CEOs from Amazon to IBM, Salesforce and JPMorgan Chase are telling their employees to prepare for disruption as AI either transforms or eliminates their jobs in the future. Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post. AI will 'improve inventory placement, demand forecasting and the efficiency of our robots,' Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a Tuesday public memo that predicted his company's corporate workforce will shrink 'in the next few years.' He joins a string of other top executives that have recently sounded the alarm about AI's impact in the workplace. Economists say there aren't yet strong signs that AI is driving widespread layoffs across industries. But there is evidence that workers across the United States are increasingly using AI in their jobs and the technology is starting to transform some roles such as computer programming, marketing and customer service. At the same time, CEOs are under pressure to show they are embracing new technology and getting results - incentivizing attention-grabbing predictions that can create additional uncertainty for workers. 'It's a message to shareholders and board members as much as it is to employees,' Molly Kinder, a Brookings Institution fellow who studies the impact of AI, said of the CEO announcements, noting that when one company makes a bold AI statement, others typically follow. 'You're projecting that you're out in the future, that you're embracing and adopting this so much that the footprint [of your company] will look different.' Some CEOs fear they could be ousted from their job within two years if they don't deliver measurable AI-driven business gains, a Harris Poll survey conducted for software company Dataiku showed. Tech leaders have sounded some of the loudest warnings - in line with their interest in promoting AI's power. At the same time, the industry has been shedding workers the last few years after big hiring sprees during the height of the coronavirus pandemic and interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve. At Amazon, Jassy told the company's workers that AI would in 'the next few years' reduce some corporate roles like customer service representatives and software developers, but also change work for those in the company's warehouses. IBM, which recently announced job cuts, said it replaced a couple hundred human resource workers with AI 'agents' for repetitive tasks such as onboarding and scheduling interviews. In January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggested on Joe Rogan's podcast that the company is building AI that might be able to do what some human workers do by the end of the year. 'We, at Meta as well as the other companies working on this, are going to have an AI that can effectively be sort of a mid-level engineer at your company,' Zuckerberg said. 'Over time we'll get to the point where a lot of the code in our apps … is actually going to be built by AI engineers instead of people engineers.' Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, maker of the chatbot Claude, boldly predicted last month that half of all white-collar entry-level jobs may be eliminated by AI within five years. Leaders in other sectors have also chimed in. Marianne Lake, JPMorgan's CEO of consumer and community banking, told an investor meeting last month that AI could help the bank cut headcount in operations and account services by 10 percent. The CEO of BT Group Allison Kirkby suggested that advances in AI would mean deeper cuts at the British telecom company. Even CEOs who reject the idea of AI replacing humans on a massive scale are warning workers to prepare for disruption. Jensen Huang, CEO of AI chip designer Nvidia said last month, 'You're not going to lose your job to an AI, but you're going to lose your job to someone who uses AI.' Google CEO Sundar Pichai said at Bloomberg's tech conference this month that AI will help engineers be more productive but that his company would still add more human engineers to its team. Meanwhile, Microsoft is planning more layoffs amid heavy investment in AI, Bloomberg reported this week. Other tech leaders at Shopify, Duolingo and Box have told workers they are now required to use AI at their jobs, and some will monitor usage as part of performance reviews. Some companies have indicated that AI could slow hiring. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff recently called Amodei's prognosis 'alarmist' on an earnings call, but on the same call chief operating and financial officer Robin Washington said that an AI agent has helped to reduce hiring needs and bring $50 million in savings. Despite corporate leaders' warnings, economists don't yet see broad signs that AI is driving humans out of work. 'We have little evidence of layoffs so far,' said Columbia Business School professor Laura Veldkamp, whose research explores how companies' use of AI affects the economy. 'What I'd look for are new entrants with an AI-intensive business model, entering and putting the existing firms out of business.' Some researchers suggest there is evidence AI is playing a role in the drop in openings for some specific jobs, like computer programming, where AI tools that generate code have become standard. Google's Pichai said last year that more than a quarter of new code at the company was initially suggested by AI. Many other workers are increasingly turning to AI tools, for everything from creating marketing campaigns to helping with research - with or without company guidance. The percentage of American employees who use AI daily has doubled in the last year to 8 percent, according to a Gallup poll released this week. Those using it at least a few times a week jumped from 12 percent to 19 percent. Some AI researchers say the poll may not actually reflect the total number of workers using AI as many may use it without disclosing it. 'I would suspect the numbers are actually higher,' said Ethan Mollick, co-director of Wharton School of Business' generative AI Labs, because some workers avoid disclosing AI usage, worried they would be seen as less capable or breaching corporate policy. Only 30 percent of respondents to the Gallup survey said that their company had general guidelines or formal policies for using AI. OpenAI's ChatGPT, one of the most popular chatbots, has more than 500 million weekly users around the globe, the company has said. It is still unclear what benefits companies are reaping from employees' use of AI, said Arvind Karunakaran, a faculty member of Stanford University's Center for Work, Technology, and Organization. 'Usage does not necessarily translate into value,' he said. 'Is it just increasing productivity in terms of people doing the same task quicker or are people now doing more high value tasks as a result?' Lynda Gratton, a professor at London Business School, said predictions of huge productivity gains from AI remain unproven. 'Right now, the technology companies are predicting there will be a 30% productivity gain. We haven't yet experienced that, and it's not clear if that gain would come from cost reduction … or because humans are more productive.' The pace of AI adoption is expected to accelerate even further if more companies use advanced tools such as AI agents and they deliver on their promise of automating work, Mollick said. AI labs are hoping to prove their agents are reliable within the next year or so, which will be a bigger disrupter to jobs, he said. While the debate continues over whether AI will eliminate or create jobs, Mollick said 'the truth is probably somewhere in between.' 'A wave of disruption is going to happen,' he said. Related Content 3-pound puppy left in trash is rescued, now thriving How to meet street cats around the world 'Jaws' made people fear sharks. 50 years later, can it help save them?
