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Is your job at risk from AI? Should you be scared? Are you sick of people asking questions like these but then failing to provide adequate answers? If your response to at least one of these questions is “yes” you’ll probably be interested in a new study published by the market research firm Forrester last week; it attempts to answer these questions in a more rigorous way than previous efforts from rival soothsayers, whose findings Forrester cattily dismisses as “hard to find evidence for in real-world data.”
Forrester‘s approach rests on an interesting premise; while many jobs will be heavily influenced by generative AI, they claim few will be replaced by it because most human roles involve a level of judgment that’s beyond the ability of chatbots, at least for the foreseeable future. Viewed through this lens, the data suggests the only jobs in imminent danger of being replaced by AI are those that have high “automation potential” as well as high “generative AI influence.” For example, proofreaders, copywriters, and technical writers score highly on both scales and are in a highly precarious position, but authors and editors are described as having almost no “automation potential” at all, due to the high degree of human judgment required in those positions.
If that sounds positive, here’s the bad news: Forrester may not think AI will replace most jobs any time soon, but that doesn’t mean your job is safe. The firm predicts that “automation and AI” (our emphasis) will replace 8m American jobs by 2030, but only 30% (2.4m) of those will be lost to AI; the other 5.6m will be replaced by other forms of automation, which continue to pose a far greater threat to long-term job stability than chatbots.
The existence of multiple threats to job stability, instead of just one, is nothing to celebrate, but there’s even less consolation for those working in high-risk industries. One such group are actors, who are increasingly becoming the canaries in the AI mines, and this week SAG-AFTRA voted to endorse a potential strike by voice actors in the video game industry, which begs the question: what does the AI-driven future hold for gamers? Don’t miss our in-depth look at gaming’s close association with AI over the years, and what’s coming next!
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