The roles expected to be in hot demand from AI boom
Employers predict that AI will lead to fewer jobs in the short term, but workers in some occupations may benefit from increased demand for their skills.
Despite significant debate about the extent of disruption that AI will bring to the workforce, it is too early to tell what the overall impact will be, the Reserve Bank of Australia said in a report on Thursday.
Just over half of more than 100 firms surveyed by the RBA expected increased use of AI would lead to staff reductions over the next three years.
However, these answers do not take into account other factors that could increase employment.
If AI increased productivity and led to faster expansion of jobs, it could increase labor demand, for example.
“Long-term modeling in the Australian context shows that the adoption of AI could lead to a net increase in employment,” said report authors Joel Fernando, Kate McLoughlin and Ravi Ratnayake.
Because of its potential to replace non-routine cognitive tasks, AI posed a greater threat to high-skilled jobs that were less susceptible to displacement than previous technological advances.
Companies surveyed said jobs such as accounting, office support, contact centres, legacy IT support, junior professionals and manual roles in production and logistics were at risk of displacement.
Conversely, demand for jobs in artificial intelligence engineering, data engineering, cybersecurity, robotics, business analysis and process orchestration, and customer experience and design is expected to increase.
“Most companies surveyed reported difficulty finding skilled workers (e.g., data engineers and scientists) who would encourage their adoption of AI,” the article said.
“This problem is expected to become even more challenging in the coming years as more firms compete for these skills, potentially constraining the pace of investment in the future.”
Australia’s uptake of AI has so far lagged behind other developed economies, and enterprise adoption of AI is still at a very early stage, the firms report.
While the technology is expected to save labor and increase productivity in the long run, companies have said governments can make a much bigger impact by cutting burdensome bureaucracy.
“Many firms surveyed noted that the volume and complexity of regulations has distracted staff from core business activities and has been a significant factor affecting workforce productivity growth over the past five years.”
Deputy Productivity Minister Andrew Leigh has previously called for light-touch regulation to encourage AI adoption, citing studies that suggest early adopters are hiring more workers rather than laying off staff.
He urged miners to adopt new technologies such as automated drilling and driverless trucks to increase productivity.
“Research shows that young, fast-growing firms are central to job creation and innovation,” he said at the Energy and Mineral Tax Conference in Brisbane.
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