Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and
Speaker 1: Jason Kelly on Bloomberg Radio work every day. So, as
Speaker 1: you know, jobs and focus today, Uh, this morning again
Speaker 1: people talking about what I missed that when talking about jobs,
Speaker 1: one subject that reliably comes up is AI, artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: and it's impact on labor markets. I want to point
Speaker 1: out that software to automate manual task Jason, you might
Speaker 1: find this industry interesting, is growing at twenty per year,
Speaker 1: likely to reach about five billion. So I mean it's
Speaker 1: a it's a gramming impact numbers, Yeah, real numbers. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about this with Mark Ummureau. He is Senior
Speaker 1: Fellow and policy director at the Metropolitan Policy Program at
Speaker 1: book Brookings on the phone from Washington, d C. I'm
Speaker 1: rushing to get to you because I am curious how
Speaker 1: you see all of this. Nice to uh have you
Speaker 1: joining us on this Friday, Mark, So, I don't know.
Speaker 1: We talked about AI and the impact it's having on
Speaker 1: the late remarket. What's some of the latest researcher writings
Speaker 1: that you have seen or done on this? Hey, well,
Speaker 1: it's great to be here. So you're rushing to make
Speaker 1: sure that your job remains while you finished it. Well,
Speaker 1: so okay, So so uh you know, this research that
Speaker 1: we've done focuses on AI specifically. This isn't about broader
Speaker 1: forms of robotic and other kinds of automation. So AI
Speaker 1: specifically has its own particular uh footprint or work using
Speaker 1: patent data to identify on affected occupation shows that, yes,
Speaker 1: manufacturing has a lot of AI coming, but it's the
Speaker 1: white collar workforce that may be most involved with it.
Speaker 1: And so what does that look like? You know, what
Speaker 1: what would it look like to to someone who's in
Speaker 1: a white collar profession now or maybe more importantly, a
Speaker 1: younger person who's going into college right now, and thinking
Speaker 1: about how this may affect the work force of the
Speaker 1: next fifteen years. Uh, it doesn't. What it doesn't mean
Speaker 1: necessarily is that all the jobs and all those occupations
Speaker 1: will go away. And this is things like market research,
Speaker 1: sales managers, computer programming, financial advice, management analysts. All of
Speaker 1: those are going to be heavily involved with AI. We
Speaker 1: don't think that necessarily means that that they will be uh,
Speaker 1: you know, liquidated in some way. AUTO involvement doesn't mean
Speaker 1: necessarily erosion of work. But we think it's definitely suggests
Speaker 1: coming uh flux and change, and and those coming into
Speaker 1: these occupations better be ready to roll with it, because
Speaker 1: at minimum, these technologies are going to change what people
Speaker 1: are doing, speed up change, and require new skills learning well.
Speaker 1: And a lot of what we've heard in terms of
Speaker 1: conversations with various guests that you know we're all going
Speaker 1: to be working are not all of us, but maybe
Speaker 1: a lot of people are gonna be working alongside AI
Speaker 1: uh and getting an assistant what they're doing, and so
Speaker 1: those menial tasks are being done by computers, by AI
Speaker 1: and so on, and it frees us up to do
Speaker 1: more complicated things and do more of it. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: absolutely and it can be very much persuaded that that's true.
Speaker 1: I think it's harder to see the upside in some
Speaker 1: ways for individual workers in a factory and where robotics
Speaker 1: comes in here. I think it very much is uh
Speaker 1: possibility that workers going to be freed up from the
Speaker 1: most boring drudgery, you know, cranking out standard reports every month, UH,
Speaker 1: get out from under that and get more into the interpretation,
Speaker 1: into the human interaction, the networking UH and all of that.
Speaker 1: I think that's true. Uh, I think there will be
Speaker 1: a lot of change along the way. You know, in
Speaker 1: this is in our in our horizon is more than
Speaker 1: just the next five years. We're talking over ten, fifteen,
Speaker 1: twenty years. And so Mark, how should we you know,
Speaker 1: those of us who are mid career, how should we
Speaker 1: be thinking about either different training or you know, different
Speaker 1: ways of looking at the world. Are preparing ourselves for
Speaker 1: this different sort of future very much big changes ahead.
Speaker 1: I think there's the need to really get more focused
Speaker 1: on adding value, doing what the machines can't do. So
Speaker 1: if a machine can do it, it can probably do
Speaker 1: it better than you can. So find we need to
Speaker 1: focus on the things that they can't do, and that's
Speaker 1: often things around judgment, UH, ethics, leadership, motivation, interaction, interpersonal exchange,
Speaker 1: you know, gauging UH complex situations. So I think there's
Speaker 1: there is a huge scope of work, all of the
Speaker 1: creative aspects of jobs can will likely be resilient for
Speaker 1: a good long time. So I think I think though
Speaker 1: it is going to require more focus on what exactly
Speaker 1: you know, humans are bringing to each job. If you
Speaker 1: had to pick one industry, where AI and the type
Speaker 1: of work that you're saying will be displaced as a result.
Speaker 1: What would it be. Well, our research shows that, you know,
Speaker 1: marketing and sales are going to be heavily involved. You know,
Speaker 1: we don't know if it's negative disruptions, but clearly very
Speaker 1: high scores in our forecast of association with AI And
Speaker 1: I think I think you can see why there's prediction
Speaker 1: of uh, you know, uh interest in things, prediction of sales.
Speaker 1: All of these things can be done, so I think,
Speaker 1: and I think they're some reporting. I think people in
Speaker 1: marketing and sales see some of this coming, but they
Speaker 1: believe that they will have a human role in the future.
Speaker 1: But they know there's a lot of change coming. All right,
Speaker 1: really interesting insights. Thank you so much. Mark Morrow, senior
Speaker 1: fellow and policy director at the Metrotol Metropolitan excuse me,
Speaker 1: a policy program at Brookings C, joined us on the
Speaker 1: phone from Washington, d C.