Friend or foe?

Certain jobs will survive and thrive in the age of Al... will yours be one of them?

- STORY NICOLA FIELD

First, a confession. I could have pulled this story together in less than a minute by using artificial intelligence (AI). Easy money, right? But I didn't. Why not? Well, for one, if the editor found out I'd lose my job (a pretty good incentive to give ChatGPT a miss).

More to the point, the end product wouldn't have been as good. This isn't me blowing smoke. Generative AI may be developing at a rapid pace but it still isn't able to grill subject matter experts and fold their comments into original copy.

Not yet, at least.

However, if a report by the World Economic Forum (WEF) is anything to go by, plenty of Australians could be working in jobs that will be obsolete in as little as five years.

First the good news

AI and other tech advances are expected to create more jobs than they will render obsolete.

The WEF's Future of Jobs Report 2025 estimates that advances in technology could create 170 million jobs globally by 2030. On the flipside, 92 million roles are forecast to be lost.

Still, that's a net increase of 78 million jobs around the world. The challenge is having the skills to work in one of the jobs that will survive and thrive in the age of AI.

Not surprisingly, the fastest growing roles are expected to be tech-driven, especially those that hinge on advancements in AI and robotics.

As the chart shows (right top), many of these jobs didn't even exist a generation ago - we're talking big data specialists, fintech engineers and AI and machine-learning specialists.

Conversely, AI and robotics are expected to sound the death knell for a variety of roles including cashiers, bank tellers and data entry clerks. What is surprising, is that the WEF says some highly skilled jobs, such as accountants and auditors, are expected to decline by 2030 as a result of AI, as shown in the chart (right bottom).