The International Monetary Fund chief voiced concerns this week about the impact of artificial intelligence on job markets, adding that the world has had little time to “prepare” for the technology.
AI is hitting global labour forces “like a tsunami,” IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told an event in Zurich on Monday.
“We have very little time to get people ready for it, businesses ready for it,” she added.
Also on AF: AI Can’t Be Trusted to Set Interest Rates – Yet: Bank Chief
Speaking at the Swiss Institute of International Studies, Georgieva noted that artificial intelligence was likely to impact 60% of jobs in advanced economies and 40% of jobs around the world in the next two years.
For several businesses, however, that impact has already started to manifest.
Employment firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. noted in a February report that AI-related job cuts were on the rise in the US since May 2023. That was because firms were either moving towards developing the tech or depending upon it to replace certain duties and roles.
Rapid advancement of AI was currently affecting jobs in media and technology, but its effect was “beginning to be felt” across other sectors, the report added.
In March, US tech giant IBM reportedly began laying off employees in non-customer-facing roles, aiming to replace them with AI.
The company’s chief had said last year that the company was planning to slow or suspend hiring in 26,000 roles which could be carried out by AI and automation, CRN magazine reported. That number accounted for about 10% of the firm’s workforce.
Meanwhile, about 40% and 26% of jobs in emerging markets and low-income countries, respectively, are at risk from AI, the IMF has previously noted.
According to accounting firm PwC, AI and related technologies could displace around 26% of existing jobs in China.
Georgieva has previously called on policymakers to manage this “troubling trend” and prevent the technology from “stoking social tensions”.
On Monday, she reiterated that call. AI “could bring a tremendous increase in productivity if we manage it well, but it can also lead to more misinformation and, of course, more inequality in our society.”
View this post on Instagram
- Reuters, with additional inputs from Vishakha Saxena
Also read:
AI Will Worsen Global Inequality, Replace Jobs, Says IMF – BBC
Google, Microsoft, Intel to Study AI-Related Job Losses – WaPo
AI Could Pass Human Tests This Decade, Says Nvidia Chief
Warren Buffett Likens AI to the Atomic Bomb — Quartz
Big Tech Exaggerating AI’s Threat to Humanity, Expert Says
