AI is likely to have an impact on every profession. Sooner or later, companies will have the economic incentive to invest in AI to automate labor-intensive activities. According to ZDNet.com, 40% of employees will have to upscale their skills due to AI.
Tasks that are manual, mundane, or data-driven—with high predictability—are eligible for automation. Several professions containing such tasks are progressively (and rapidly) seeing the implementation of AI, which has the potential to considerably change the job landscape.
If you would like to evaluate the potential of AI to perform some of your day-to-day activities, think about which activities are currently taking up most of your time and what percentage of your work day is spent on such activities.
Jobs Most at Risk due to AI
The following jobs are predicted to face the highest potential for automation by AI:
- Customer Service Representatives: AI’s evolving capacity to manage customer inquiries and complaints puts call center jobs at risk. AI chatbots using tools such as ChatGPT can handle tasks formerly thought to be safeguarded from automation, potentially leading to job displacement in this sector. AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants are increasingly being used to handle customer inquiries and support, reducing the need for human representatives. This is already happening in many companies. When you contact a company for customer service you are likely to be referred to their website where you will converse with a chat bot. Today, a large percentage of chat bots are limited to canned questions and answers. Many people are unsatisfied with that kind of service; however, with AI, customers can chat with a bot using natural language and receive service that is equal or superior to service provided by humans. And, that service is likely to improve over time as bots are trained to deal with more diverse situations. In addition, customers will become more open to using bots for customer service and in many cases may prefer them over humans to speed up the service and to improve its quality.
- Technical Jobs: AI’s capacity to automate coding and programming processes poses substantial threats to professions within this sphere. Specialists such as coders, programmers, software engineers, and data analysts are at risk as AI tools can generate code faster than their human counterparts, potentially replacing these jobs. Initially, AI-powered code writing is likely to be supervised by humans, but ultimately, much of the simple coding tasks will be automated.
- Media Jobs: In the media industry, professions such as advertising, content creation, technical writing, and journalism are at risk. AI tools can read, write, and understand text data efficiently so tasks that were traditionally conducted by humans in these roles face the potential for automation.
- Legal Industry Jobs: Roles within the legal industry, including paralegals and legal assistants, are at risk as AI can manage structured and language-oriented tasks, potentially automating tasks traditionally performed by these professionals.
- Market Research Analysts: AI’s ability to analyze data and predict outcomes could potentially automate tasks performed by market research analysts. This inherent capability of AI puts market research analysts on the list of professions at significant risk from AI.
The three main levels of AI
Weak AI uses a single task. Alexa and Siri are based on weak AI. These tools can only perform tasks that they were trained to perform. For example, “Alexa, play jazz music,” but not “Alexa, what is the distance from my home to my work?”
General AI can pick up skills that humans have. It can respond to an unknown question, perform multiple tasks, develop emotions and intimacy and act unpredictably. This is almost the state of AI today as can be experienced while interacting with ChatGPT.
Super AI is when artificial intelligence surpasses humans in capabilities and intelligence. AI technology is not there yet. This transformation could happen a soon as two years and as long as 20 years, but it will undoubtably happen. For example, we are very likely to see customer service personnel saying to a client: “Sorry, I don’t have the answer to your question. Let me transfer you to a bot.”