- Before AI eliminates jobs, it's more likely to change them, as companies explore its potential.
- Several broad examinations of the labor market don't show a significant impact from AI —yet.
- "It's still very, very early," one researcher told Business Insider. Adopting tech often takes time.
If you're only trying to spot the wave, you might miss the rising tide.
According to at least some technologists and CEOs's dire predictions, AI will herald the end of work as we know it — especially for white collar employees. Yet, for now, AI isn't as likely to steal your job as it is to reshape it.
The next couple of years will likely be bumpy as companies and employees figure out what AI can do, workplace observers told Business Insider.
"It's still very, very early," Martha Gimbel, executive director and cofounder of the Budget Lab at Yale, told Business Insider. She said the fears about AI as an imminent job killer "speaks to how much this debate has, frankly, gotten a little bit out of control."
Recent Budget Lab research has found that, in the nearly three years since the release of ChatGPT, the overall labor market hasn't experienced major disruptions. That's because it often takes years — even decades — for people and businesses to adopt even breakthrough tech.
"It is not the case that ChatGPT is released and people know exactly what to do with their marketing departments the next day," Gimbel said.
She said that because the technology feels "so personal to so many people," and because it seemed to arrive overnight to many, "they are expecting the economic impacts to be as sudden and as jarring."
Jobs are changing
The absence of major disruptions doesn't mean your job looks the same as it used to. More than one in five US workers use AI to complete at least some of their work, the Pew Research Center found in a September survey. That's up from 16% about a year earlier.
Some of those workers are likely in areas such as customer service or communications, which involve keyboard-heavy tasks where AI can excel.
Generative AI can help communications staffers save 26% to 36% of their time, a recent study from Boston Consulting Group found. If companies change their processes, BCG estimates that GenAI can help increase the time savings of comms workers by 47%.
It could take a couple more years to determine whether GenAI will ultimately help comms teams save that much time, Russell Dubner, BCG's global chief communications officer, told Business Insider.Yet, in the meantime, he expects more companies to try to identify wider, department-level use in areas like communications.
BCG's own communications team ran tests using AI and other tools to streamline repetitive tasks. That let the team free up capacity equivalent to about 13 full-time staffers, Dubner said.
He said the time savings are, for now, how many employers appear to be looking at AI with questions like, "Have I created new capacity to do either a broader set of work or a higher value set of work?"
Clients he speaks with are less focused on cost savings and more on the fact that as much as 80% of corporate affairs roles, for example, can be augmented through GenAI.
"They want to make sure they get those efficiencies," Dubner said.
Automating tasks before jobs
While it's possible that AI will take over some jobs entirely, it's more likely AI will first absorb parts of jobs, Martin Ford, futurist and author of the book "Rise of the Robots," told Business Insider.
Over time, that could mean fewer humans get hired overall.
If a company has two people doing the same work, and AI can take on half of those tasks, there will be less demand for people, Ford said.
"Management, at some point, is going to look at that and say, 'Hey, you know, there's really only one job here,'" he said.
While AI's impact might be hard to discern across the economy, it's often more apparent within certain industries or regions, saidMona Mourshed, founding CEO of Generation, a nonprofit network focused on economic mobility.
She told Business Insider that Generation's research found that for roles that appear "AI exposed" — think areas like tech, customer service, and sales — entry-level job vacancy rates have, in some cases, plunged 20% to 40%.
Mourshed said that because AI advances, economic uncertainty, and changes in global supply chains are occurring simultaneously, it's difficult to know what's causing the decrease in job vacancies.
Mixed signals on AI's impact
Part of the uncertainty surrounding AI's impact is reflected in disparate economic data. The Economic Innovation Group, in a recent analysis of the effect of AI on jobs, found that workers "highly exposed" to AI are doing better in the labor market than those who are less so. The think tank said that workers more exposed to AI earn more, are more likely to have an undergraduate or graduate degree, and are less likely to be unemployed.
At the same time, a recent Stanford study found that workers just starting their careers — those in their early to mid-20s — in fields susceptible to automation by AI have seen a 13% relative decrease in employment.
Yale's Gimbel said that because many employers have been "slow to fire, slow to hire" recently, this has meant there are often fewer opportunities for graduates, as fewer established workers move around and create openings.
"That's going to hit younger workers more than older workers," she said.
Mourshed said we'll likely need another 12 to 18 months to figure out AI's true impact.
"We're in the first stage of what will happen," she said. "We could have lots of hypotheses about how it turns out, but fundamentally, no one knows yet."
Do you have a story to share about AI's impact on your career? Contact this reporter at tparadis@businessinsider.com.
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