orkers are anxious that AI is coming for their jobs. But some HR leaders say those fears may be unwarranted.
AI will eliminate relatively few roles overall, according to Nickle LaMoreaux, chief human resources officer at IBM. While highly administrative and process-driven jobs are likely to disappear, she says the productivity gains from AI will create entirely new roles that don't yet exist.
"As economies grow, we're going to need more jobs," LaMoreaux told The Deep View at New York City Tech Week earlier this month. "AI will take a portion of that, but because we're growing, we still need human jobs to fill that other space."
It's too early to know exactly what those jobs will look like. Instead of focusing on which roles AI might replace, LaMoreaux says companies should think about how employees can use the time freed up by automation.
That optimistic outlook may offer little comfort to early-career workers.
"If you now have the capacity freed up, can you deploy those employees into new models, new customer needs, new products, or honestly just a long list of work you never get to in your organization?" LaMoreaux asks.
Entry-level roles exposed to AI, including customer service, data entry, and coding, are in "substantial decline," according to recent research from Stanford University's Digital Economy Lab. The study found that knowledge workers with college degrees could face some of the biggest disruptions.
Even so, LaMoreaux says recent graduates can take steps to stand out. Her advice: focus less on responsibilities and more on outcomes. Whether you managed a budget for a volunteer organization or published a research paper, be prepared to explain what you accomplished, how you achieved it, and the impact it had. That principle also applies to AI literacy, a skill employers increasingly want to see in candidates.
Highlighting how you used AI to solve a specific problem, such as building an agent to automate a task, is more compelling than simply listing proficiency with ChatGPT on a résumé.
"AI literacy is important, but I think it's less about knowing a specific tool and more about your application of it," LaMoreaux says.
Regardless of industry or job title, soft skills will remain difficult to automate. Communication, leadership, judgment, and conflict management, LaMoreaux says, "will not be taken over" by AI.
Our Deeper View #
AI's impact on jobs is becoming a growing source of anxiety for workers. As companies lay off workers and cite AI as a way to cut costs, employees are left trying to figure out what comes next. Some workers are changing careers, while college students are switching majors in search of jobs they believe are less vulnerable to automation. But many of these decisions are being made before AI's long-term impact on work is fully understood. History suggests technological shifts create new jobs. However, AI raises a different question. If AI can perform most of a job's tasks, what work is left for humans? The real challenge may not be whether AI creates new jobs, but whether it creates the kinds of jobs people actually want.