2024-06-13 09:30:17
The history of AI is more than 70 years old. As early as 1950, British mathematician and cryptologist Alan Turing was interested in the ability of a machine to imitate a conversation. Today, AI systems are able to make predictions, formulate recommendations, or make decisions. Will they partially replace us at work?
In a study published last May and entitled « A new future of work: The race to deploy AI and raise skills in Europe and beyond »McKinsey indicates that by 2030, nearly 30% of current working hours could be automated, thanks to generative AI (Gen AI).
Not everyone will be treated the same. “Demand for workers in the food service, production, customer service, sales and administrative support sectors, which all declined over the 2012-22 period, would continue to decline through 2030.”warns McKinsey.
These jobs involve a large amount of repetitive tasks, collecting and processing basic data, all of which automated systems can handle efficiently.
If this hypothesis of 30% of hours carried out by AI becomes reality, many employees will have to change profession according to these analysts. “By 2030, under the faster adoption scenario we modelled, Europe could need up to 12 million career transitions, or 6.5% of current employment. Under a slower scenario, the number of career transitions needed would rise to 8.5 million, or 4.6% of current employment.”we read in this report of around sixty pages.
Time-consuming tasks
Like other studies, McKinsey’s attempts to determine precisely the impacts, positive and negative, of artificial intelligence on professions. Mission impossible? It is indeed difficult to extrapolate precisely on the consequences of the integration of AI in offices, but also on production lines.
One thing is for sure, task automation did not wait for the integration of AI to replace time-consuming tasks. Many office workers report spending an average of one-third of their day on tasks they consider to be of “low added value” according to Slack’s recent Workforce Index survey. French office workers suffer from burnout due to work activity.
To limit these tasks assigned to employees, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has been used for several years in finance, insurance, logistics, etc. McKinsey also published an article entitled “Four fundamentals workplace automation” in 2015.
But the acceleration of computing power thanks to the cloud and ad hoc chips like those of Nvida (which in 30 years has gone from being a simple manufacturer of graphics cards appreciated by gamers to a key player in AI) is changing the situation and complicating the task of analysts.
The impact from GenAI
For now, AI is not synonymous with massive job destruction. According to a investigation from INSEE published by the Ministry of Economy, “total employment of companies that have adopted AI increases more than in companies that have not adopted (…). The effect results mainly from the creation of new jobs, rather than a more significant number of existing jobs”.
However, this survey confirms McKinsey’s predictions: the effect of AI on total employment is not uniform from one job to another. “Certain levels within the company or certain professions risk suffering net job reductions. Companies that adopt AI for administrative management or marketing see their jobs as “professionals administrative and commercial intermediaries” decrease.
But many studies focused on AI. With GenAI, the situation could radically change for “knowledge” professions. For now, GenAI is still far from being optimized and capable of generating quality content. « The hype is here, the revenue is not » financial analysts are constantly repeating. ChatGPT and other solutions should be seen and used as assistants. Even Amazon and Google are moderating expectations around generative AI !
Some professions involving knowledge, strategy and creativity (doctors, teachers, lawyers, journalists, artists, etc.), formerly ” perceived as crucibles of human intelligence, could be affected by a reduction in total number of jobs”, warns INSEE.
Early studies on GenAI suggest that the productivity effect dominates on average for employees in companies, while the crowding-out effect seems to be more significant for independent individuals who have to perform mostly tasks that are more easily replaced by AI. But will one day “AI should replace all our jobs” as stated Elon Musk ?
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