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How to resolve AdBlock issue? AI is already disrupting work and career opportunities
By Leon Gettler, Talking Business >>
THERE IS NO DOUBT that artificial intelligence (AI) is disrupting work and career opportunities.
A recent study by people2people, Australia’s leading recruitment agency found that entry-level jobs could be the first quiet casualty of workplace AI adoption, with 45% of employers expecting to hire fewer junior roles within three to five years
People2people's NSW managing director Catherine Kennedy said the findings were alarming.
She said marketing, sales and lead generation activities were being particularly impacted by AI taking over jobs from people. The same with junior ‘grunt’ work. 
“Really there’s going to be fewer and fewer entry level and junior types of positions in a whole host of industries,” Ms Kennedy told Talking Business.
“That raises a question around a roadblock around leadership in the long term if we don’t have junior people coming into these different professions.
“How do we build the leaders of the future?”
Yes, it is due to AI adoption
Ms Kennedy said this potential leadership chain interruption was predominantly because of AI adoption.
“The areas that are most impacted now … the functions within business that are quite tangible, very process driven, maybe there’s a lot of data’s that’s being dealt with,” she said.
“So things like accounting, IT … even things like customer service, where there are huge efficiencies, (potentially) having less humans, and having AI do that process.
“But it doesn’t address the wider issue of: are we going to have a workforce in the future? It’s definitely a question we need to be grappling with.”
Smart companies are taking precautions
Ms Kennedy said good companies were now looking at this issue.
“What smart organisations are doing is thinking about what are the things we can get a robot to do, probably better than any human, and let’s free up the human time to do the things that are uniquely human,” she said.
“So influencing, understanding nuance, understanding the context of the data.
“Those are the things so far that robots are not able to beat the humans on. That’s the way things are moving.”
She said all this left business in a predicament.
“Yes there is ‘junior’ grunt work in all kinds of industries, that will be the first thing AI is going to step in and do more of,” she said.
“But if does create that challenge where if you don’t have anyone doing that job, then how do they become in 10 years, or 20 years or 30 years, the CFO or the managing partner or the CEO even?
“So one of the things that tertiary institutions and certainly businesses are grappling with is: what are the pathways for people to get into the workforce?”
Staff not being upskilled in AI
A key problem, according to the People2people survey, was that businesses were not upskilling their employees in AI.
“One of the pieces of data that came out with our research was that while organisations are putting huge amounts of investment and time into how AI can improve their processes, and how they implement it in their business operation, 69% of employees surveyed said their organisation was not preparing them for AI,” Ms Kennedy said.
“So they’re not giving them skills or investing in training and development for them, to be able to utilise this effectively, in the next three or five years, let alone what happens in their career path 10-15 years down the track. 
“It’s a time like no other.”
Hear the complete interview and catch up with other topical business news on Leon Gettler’s Talking Business podcast, released every Friday at www.acast.com/talkingbusiness
https://shows.acast.com/talkingbusiness/episodes/talking-business-9-interview-with-catherine-kennedy-from-peo
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