AI hasnt hit employment that badly yet – Mint

Artificial intelligence technologies are often accused of taking away jobs. But how much does the perception hold up in reality? In a new study, Daron Acemoglu of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his peers have found that AI has indeed changed the skill profile of jobs, but its aggregate impact on employment is too little to detect.

The study analyses the impact of AI on jobs in the US labour market using job vacancy data from 2007 and 2010-18. The data is sourced from Burning Glass Technologies, a company that specializes in job market analytics.

The study finds a significant rise in the number of jobs that require AI skills, particularly after 2014 and mainly in industries that use AI technologies. The job descriptions for these vacancies show that companies that could accommodate AI stopped looking for workers with certain skills that they used to look for earlier.

At the same time, these firms started listing jobs with additional skill requirements, signalling that even though some jobs had died away, others may have emerged. The study also finds some evidence to suggest that establishments highly exposed to AI reduced hiring in jobs that do not require AI skills.

On more aggregate levels however, the study does not find any conclusive evidence to show that more exposure to AI impacts employment and wages. The authors attribute this to the fact that AI technologies are still in their infancy and have spread only to a limited part of the US economy.

The authors suggest more research on why exposure to AI is not closely linked with hiring in non-AI jobs. They say their study cant predict yet which way AI will gowhether it will complement or substitute human capabilitiesbecause the scope of AI of the future could be different from today.

Also read: AI And Jobs: Evidence From Online Vacancies

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AI hasnt hit employment that badly yet - Mint