41% of companies worldwide plan to reduce workforces by 2030 due to AI

London (CNN) — Artificial intelligence is coming for your job: 41% of employers intend to downsize their workforce as AI automates certain tasks, a World Economic Forum survey showed Wednesday.

Out of hundreds of large companies surveyed around the world, 77% also said they were planning to reskill and upskill their existing workers between 2025-2030 to better work alongside AI, according to findings published in the WEF’s Future of Jobs Report. But, unlike the previous, 2023 edition, this year’s report did not say that most technologies, including AI, were expected to be “a net positive” for job numbers.

“Advances in AI and renewable energy are reshaping the (labor) market — driving an increase in demand for many technology or specialist roles while driving a decline for others, such as graphic designers,” the WEF said in a press release ahead of its annual meeting in Davos later this month.

Writing in the wide-ranging report, Saadia Zahidi, the forum’s managing director, highlighted the role of generative AI in reshaping industries and tasks across all sectors. The technology can create original text, images and other content in response to prompts from users.

Postal service clerks, executive secretaries and payroll clerks are among jobs that employers expect to experience the fastest decline in numbers in coming years, whether as a result of the spread of AI or other trends.

“The presence of both graphic designers and legal secretaries just outside the top 10 fastest-declining job roles, a first-time prediction not seen in previous editions of the Future of Jobs Report, may illustrate GenAI’s increasing capacity to perform knowledge work,” the report said.

Conversely, AI skills are increasingly in demand. Close to 70% of companies are planning to hire new workers with skills to design AI tools and enhancements, and 62% intend to recruit more people with skills to better work alongside AI, according to the latest survey, conducted last year.

Striking an optimistic note, the report said the primary impact of technologies such as generative AI on jobs might lie in their potential for “augmenting” human skills through “human-machine collaboration,” rather than in outright replacement, “particularly given the continued importance of human-centered skills.”

However, many workers have already been replaced by AI. In recent years, some tech firms, including file storage service Dropbox and language-learning app Duolingo, have cited AI as a reason for making layoffs.

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