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Labour market risks

International Scientific Report on the Safety of Advanced AI

Bengio et al. (2024)

Sub-category

Risk Domain

6.2Increased inequality and decline in employment quality

Social and economic inequalities caused by widespread use of AI, such as by automating jobs, reducing the quality of employment, or producing exploitative dependencies between workers and their employers.

"Unlike previous waves of automation, general- purpose AI has the potential to automate a very broad range of tasks, which could have a significant effect on the labour market. This could mean many people could lose their current jobs. Labour market frictions, such as the time needed for workers to learn new skills or relocate for new jobs, could cause unemployment in the short run even if overall labour demand remained unchanged."(p. 54)

Entity— Who or what caused the harm

Human

Due to a decision or action made by humans

AI system

Due to a decision or action made by an AI system

Other

Due to some other reason or is ambiguous

Intent— Whether the harm was intentional or accidental

Intentional

Due to an expected outcome from pursuing a goal

Unintentional

Due to an unexpected outcome from pursuing a goal

Other

Without clearly specifying the intentionality

Timing— Whether the risk is pre- or post-deployment

Pre-deployment

Occurring before the AI is deployed

Post-deployment

Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed

Other

Without a clearly specified time of occurrence

Supporting Evidence (2)

"Economists expect general- purpose AI to impact the workforce by automating tasks, augmenting worker productivity and earnings, changing the skills needed for various occupations, and displacing workers from certain occupations (513, 514, 515). Economists hold a wide range of views about the magnitude and timing of these effects, with some expecting widespread economic transformation in the next ten years, while others do not think a step- change in AI- related automation and productivity growth is imminent (516). The uncertainty about future general- purpose AI progress contributes to this uncertainty about the labour market effects of general- purpose AI."(p. 54)

"Recent empirical studies have begun to demonstrate the impact of current- generation general- purpose AI systems on various industries, notably in knowledge work: • General- purpose AI systems have been shown to increase productivity, quality, and speed in strategy consulting (520), improve performance in customer support (250) and improve computer programming (521*). • Machine translation and language models have been shown to substitute for human workers in tasks like simple large- scale language translation (522) and some writing/coding- related occupations (523, 524), leading to reduced demand for their services."(p. 54)