The implementation of artificial intelligence will mean that in the next three years some 1.4 billion people, 40% of the 3,400 million that make up the workforce worldwide, will have to retrain in some competence, according to a study and two surveys carried out by the IBM Institute for Business Value. However, they do not believe that technology will lead to job losses, although it will entail the restructuring of companies and processes, as well as the skills of the workers themselves.
Thus, the executives surveyed by IBM estimate that this percentage of the global workforce will have to retrain or learn new skills due to “the implementation of AI and automation.” In other words, it will not be so much that workers are replaced because the new technologies can carry out their work, according to the study, but that new positions will be created or existing ones will be reconsidered and for this it will be necessary to acquire new knowledge.
The incidence will be different depending on the position and the sector, but, on average, 87% of managers believe that jobs will increase in functions with generative artificial intelligence. It will be especially prominent in the attorney’s office (97% of those asked believe so), risks and compliance (93%) and finance (also 93%).
However, among executives it is expected that by 2025 generative AI will already have an impact at all levels of the company. It will be especially notable among the lowest positions, from the outset, where the impact will be ‘extreme’ for 18% of those surveyed, ‘significant’ for 29% and ‘moderate’ for 30%. Among those with experience there will be a moderate impact for 48% and it also stands out that 6% believe that there will be an extreme impact among senior managers.
Regarding the traditional debate about whether artificial intelligence will end the jobs of human workers, IBM has a somewhat tangential opinion: the technology will not, but whoever masters it will. “AI won’t replace people, but people who use AI will replace people who don’t.“, summarizes the document, which also details that the advances in these tools “promise to drastically change traditional business models” and transform “the work that employees do every day.” To carry out the study, two surveys conducted with leaders were used global (3,000 people in 28 countries) and with workers (21,000 employees in 22 countries).