One in four workers worldwide could lose their jobs to artificial intelligence (AI), and women face a much greater chance of being replaced, according to a report from two labor research groups. A new study by the United Nations International Labour Organization (ILO) and Poland’s National Research Institute backs up a ton of recent research, echoing many AI proponents’ promises, but concluding that the global generative AI workplace transformation means outright replacement will not be the “most likely outcome” of widespread AI use.
The fallout won’t be spread out evenly, researchers warn. “Clerical jobs,” the U.N.’s labor body notes, "face the highest exposure of all” thanks to generative AI’s “theoretical ability to automate many of their tasks." Thanks to the current configuration of the global labor market, that means many women’s jobs are more at risk.
The U.N.'s blog post about the report puts it more plainly: Exposure to AI replacement risk among women “continues to be significantly higher,” it says. In fact, in “high-income countries, jobs at the highest risk of automation make up 9.6 percent of female employment,” which is a “stark contrast to 3.5 percent of such jobs among men.” That places women workers in more developed nations at around three times the risk of having their role taken by an AI system than male workers.
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