The workers most likely to be replaced by advances in artificial intelligence are those in lower-wage occupations, concludes a new report from the McKinsey Global Institute.
The big picture: This isn't necessarily a story of mass job loss — these workers are likely to find higher-paying jobs in different industries, part of a broader trend already underway.
Meanwhile, higher-wage earners will also be affected by AI, but they're less likely to get thrown out of work. "Your job will shift and change, but you won't have to find a new job," says Kweilin Ellingrud, a McKinsey Global Institute director and report co-author.
State of play: Automation, accelerated by the needs of the pandemic era, has already begun displacing low-wage workers across four different fields.
Those include jobs in office support, food service (waiters/waitresses/fast-food checkout), customer service (retail clerks), and production workers who move material or work machines.
You've already seen some of this: Ordering kiosks at McDonald's replaced front-line staff; self-checkouts replaced CVS cashiers; and front-line office staff never came back after the fully remote days of COVID.
AI will turbocharge these kinds of changes. "The in-going model was about 21% of activities can be automated away. When we layer on generative AI that jumps to 30%," says Ellingrud.
A prominent example is in customer call centers, where AI can replace more humans taking calls or conducting chats.
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