AI to replace 26m jobs, says WEF

About 75 percent of surveyed companies predict up to 26 million jobs in record-keeping and administrative positions will be eliminated in the next five years as they expect to adopt artificial intelligence technologies, according to a report published by the World Economic Forum yesterday.

The organization is known for its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

The WEF study surveyed more than 800 companies that collectively employ 11.3 million workers across 45 economies from all over the world. And it uses a dataset of 673 million jobs.

Nearly a quarter of all jobs will change as a result of AI, digitization, and other economic developments like the green energy transition and supply chain re-shoring, the report said.

While the study expects AI to result in "significant labor-market disruption," the net impact of most technologies will be positive over the next five years as big data analytics, management technologies, and cybersecurity become the biggest drivers of employment growth.

For now, AI remains a smaller threat to labor prospects than other macroeconomic factors like slower economic growth, supply shortages and inflation, the report said. Opportunities for job creation will likely come from investments that facilitate the green transition of businesses, the broader application of environmental, social, and governance standards and a broad reorientation of global supply chains, it said.