AI to hit jobs market like a 'tsunami'

And we don't have long to prepare

International Monetary Fund managing director Dr Kristalina Georgieva has warned of that AI is hitting the global labour market like a “tsunami.”

Georgieva spoke at an event organised by the Swiss Institute of International Studies in Zurich earlier this week, and warned that AI was likely to impact 40% of jobs globally, and 60% of jobs in advanced economies.

"We have very little time to get people ready for it, businesses ready for it," she said.

"It could bring 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."

Georgieva said the world economy had become more prone to shocks in recent years, citing the global pandemic in 2020, as well as the war in Ukraine.

Although she expected more shocks, particularly due to the climate crisis, the global economy remained remarkably resilient, she said.

"We are not in global recession," said Georgieva, who was heckled by protesters calling for action on climate change and tackling developing world debt.

"Last year there were fears that most economies would slip into recession, that didn't happen," she said. "Inflation that has hit us with a very strong force is on the decline, almost everywhere."

It isn't Georgieva's first warning on the subject and her remarks have been interpreted through a dark lens, but it's worth remembering that "impacted" doesn't equal "replaced." Many experts seem to think that the most likely outcome is automation of mundane tasks such as data entry, and augmentation of more complex ones.

GitHub's VP and Deputy CSO Jacob DePriest believes that tools like GitHub CoPilot are being greeted enthusiastically by developers because, put simply, it's helping them write better, more secure code and reduces the time they have to spend on low value tasks. As to whether CoPilot will ultimately simply replace junior development roles altogether, he says:

"My sense is that we will still need the various experience levels. I just think those experience levels are going to be applied in increasingly different ways. We're still going to have very complex technical challenges, even if some of the repetitive stuff goes away."

You can read the full interview here.

Essentially, the bar will rise as developers will become increasingly skilled. The problems that developers have to solve will grow more complex as AI solves the easier ones.

That will still involve disruption to the jobs market, as Georgieva predicts, but it isn't quite the end of days either.