COUNTRIES WILL BE MOST AFFECTED BY AI AUTOMATION

Every country in the world stands at risk of having its workforce population replaced by AI automation. However, some countries will be more affected than others. This section analyzes the extent of the AI automation invasion per country by calculating the percentage of a country’s labor force that is at high risk of AI automation in the future.

More specifically, the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2020 indicated that AI might render at least 85 million of the world’s labor force unemployed by 2020. However, other stakeholders, like Goldman Sachs place the statistics on AI-related job losses at 300 million.

Conversely, the World Economic Forum report also says that AI technology can create at least 97 million new jobs within the same period. So, all is not lost, but there is a need to scrutinize the introduction of AI into the workplace to ensure the technology’s demerits do not outweigh its benefits.

From our findings, Singapore is the only country with less than a 40% chance of its employed population being gravely affected by the rise of AI work automation. In fact, only 3 of the 85 countries listed in the table above have less than 50% of their workforce heavily threatened by AI.

Countries with high and upper-middle-income rates are less likely to feel the impact of AI job automation.

Africa is a tech hub on the rise. However, most countries on this continent have not embraced work automation extensively, leaving many employees at high risk of losing their jobs once there’s a move to AI.

The U.S. is also susceptible to the AI job automation invasion. Let's look at how each state in the United States is dealing with the threat of AI replacement.

Artificial intelligence efforts in the U.S. pose a significant threat to at least 74.18% of jobs in the country. This rate of job loss may not be immediate, but AI’s rapidly growing capabilities can easily replace human labor in the future.

Two-thirds of the workforce in Colorado, Vermont, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Alaska are at significant risks of being replaced by human-like computer intelligence in the future. These states all have over a 67% chance of an AI workspace takeover.

Despite major indicators showing that AI can take over the job market, there is some hope for most states in the U.S. Our data shows that at least 30 states have less than a 50% chance of AI taking over jobs. The states with the lowest percentage among these are Kentucky and the District of Columbia, which have a 20.4% and 21.1% chance of having their workforce replaced by artificial intelligence technology, respectively.

Our research also revealed that certain jobs had a higher risk of being replaced by AI than others. By breaking down the industry, occupation, and average AI automation risk, this table and the findings below will help you identify which professions are most endangered.

In the near future, clerical workers in the administrative and support service industries have at least a 90% risk of losing their jobs to AI. Trailing closely behind are service and sales workers in the same industry, with an 85.7% chance of job loss.

Next will be plant and machine operators, assemblers, and craft and related trades workers in manufacturing with an 86.5% and 84.4% chance, respectively, and elementary occupations in transport and storage with an 81.5% chance of job loss.

The risk of automation-related job loss for employees in public administration, defense, and compulsory social security is as low as 9%. Other occupations with such low stats include elementary education occupations at 17.3%, human health and social work at 17.6%, education professionals at 22.8%, and professional scientific and technical activity workers at 25.1%.

81% of manufacturing jobs are at risk of being automated out in the future, followed by 77% of administrative and support service jobs and 70% of transportation and storage jobs.

In contrast, education, with a risk of 18%; human health and social work activities, with a risk of 23%; and public administration and defense; mandatory social security, with a risk of 26%, are the top three industries where jobs are least likely to be replaced by AI and robots in the future.

Clerical support positions, plant and machine operators and assemblers, and craft and related trades employees are at the greatest risk of being replaced by AI. Their likelihood of being supplanted by AI in the future exceeds 70%.

Further findings reveal that low-education workers are 280% more likely than high-education workers to be at high risk of being replaced by AI. In this case, "higher education" refers to a bachelor's degree or higher educational qualification. Here's a table that breaks down these results.

Additionally, higher-paying jobs are 34% less likely to be displaced by AI than lower-paying jobs. Low-paying occupations here refer to jobs with wages below the national average wage of $74,738. Below is a table that summarizes these findings.

This research followed a structured methodology to achieve the most accurate result possible. Below is a step-by-step explanation of the approach, process, and resources used to obtain the statistics we have presented.