Which jobs are at risk from AI in 2024? What new roles will be created? IT leaders tell us

Good news for data scientists, less so for admin

Generative AI is certainly making a grab for our attention, but as our recent research found, the move from the headlines into real applications in businesses and other organisations is yet to happen to any great extent.

Once it does, it will undoubtedly bring several changes to the workplace. Exactly what those will be and what impact they will have in the long term is the subject of a great deal of speculation.

Looking instead at the near future, as part of our recent research into IT trends we asked about the jobs that might be at risk from AI, and about positions that might be created in the next 12 months or so.

Base: 173 UK IT leaders

First, more IT leaders that think that AI will create jobs (15%) than believe it will replace roles (10%) this year, although the vast majority were noncommital. For most it's still too early to tell.

The 2% who said AI has already created jobs in their organisation worked in organisations ranging from building maintenance to law to telecoms. They mentioned new roles for security, data science and AI/ML specialists.

For most though, it was a case of current jobs being augmented rather than new ones created.

"It will change the responsibilities of existing roles rather than creating new ones," said a data scientist at a university.

Others pointed to AI-driven changes in the services they can offer.

"The information storage system, security and all of our clients' data will be saved automatically," said an IT manager at an MSP. This will alter, but not replace, the activities of those administering these services, they added.

"There will be more data science and analyst jobs," predicted an enterprise architect at an IT services company, one of several to mention data scientists as beneficiaries, while a CIO at a business services company predicted boomtime for RPA consultants, as companies look to automate where they feel it will drive efficiencies.

Several respondents said they were starting to see ads for new AI-related jobs, such as prompt engineers, customer experience managers, AI compliance officials and AI programmers.

Writing on the wall for customer facing jobs?

Asked what roles might be under threat from AI in 2024, the majority answered "none", or at least "none at the moment". As well as being bad for morale, replacing people with unproven technology is too much of a risk.

"Very few [roles will be replaced] until the technology reaches a point where the information presented can be relied on," said an IT manager in engineering.

However, almost half of our respondents did mention roles or areas of work that are already diminishing in importance and which ultimately could face the chop, the most frequent being help desk, service desk and customer support.

After customer facing support-roles, admin jobs were likely to be the next in line to be squeezed out by automation, followed by junior level coding and engineering positions.

"Over time we'll see less programmers, less second-line support staff especially in systems and hardware administration. Eventually there'll probably be less help desk staff as well," said an IT project manager in the wholesale sector.

A similar number felt that marketing people and those involved in clerical tasks and creative writing could see reductions this year or soon afterwards. Writing boilerplate text and messaging is certainly something that LLM-based applications can already do proficiently with little hand holding, and sifting through columns of data is another obvious candidate for mechanisation.

"Routine task-based roles which could be replaced by RPA: accountancy roles, matching supplier invoices with POs, etcetera," offered a CIO in education.

Analyst roles were in an interesting position with equal numbers thinking they are under threat and in line for a hiring surge.

In summary, while AI is moving extremely quickly in terms of capabilities and product releases, this has yet to translate to real impact in terms of the way people do their jobs, an exception perhaps being software development. In a year's time, that picture could look rather different, though. We will continue to carefully monitor this space.

This research was conducted in January among 173 UK IT leaders. The full report will be published shortly.