Labour market disruption

Capabilities and Risks from Frontier AI

DSIT (2023)

Source

Sub-category

Risk Domain

6Socioeconomic & Environmental

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.

"Economists view disruption and displacement in labour markets as one of the risks through which rapid advances in AI may affect citizens and reduce social welfare.170"

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 (1)

"Throughout history, technological progress has always resulted in some level of change within the labour market. Introducing new technologies often causes temporary disruption as some workers transition within or between jobs.173 For example, in 1940, 60% of job categories today didn’t exist.174 Studies suggest that the sectors with greatest exposure to labour market disruption from current AI capabilities are IT, financial, legal while education, manufacturing, agriculture and mining are least exposed.175 On the other hand, we may return to pre-1980 trends in which worker displacement from automation was roughly offset by creation of new roles.176"(p. 21)

Part of Loss of control