How AI is upending the jobs market

The Terminator warned us he’d be back—and apparently, the time is nigh. Businesses’ rising adoption of AI accounted for 10,000+ job cuts in July alone, according to a report released last week by Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Who’s being affected? While widespread, the pain is being felt most by those in tech, as well as recent college grads—who aren’t in a roast battle against Bert Kreischer but still find themselves going head-to-head against a machine, per the report. Job listings for entry-level corporate roles have dropped 15% over the past year, according to Handshake.

Other examples of AI performing jobs traditionally carried out by flesh-and-blood:

• Vogue's July print edition featured an AI-generated model used in an ad for the first time.
• Earlier this year, a controversial AI art auction hosted by Christie’s generated ~$730,000.
• Prediction markets operator Kalshi aired a fully AI-generated ad during this year’s NBA Finals, replacing a time-consuming and expensive process with a cheaper one involving less workers.
• Netflix recently used AI to create a scene of a building collapsing in the Argentine science fiction show, a VFX process that also previously required a more costly and human-intensive approach. It was the first time AI-generated content ever appeared on Netflix.

This could be the new norm

A study published last month by Microsoft indicates that, moving forward, customer service jobs or those dealing with written or verbal language—such as interpreters/translators, historians, and writers—are most susceptible to being replaced by AI.

• On the other hand, specialized physical labor roles and equipment operators, like dredge operators or water treatment plant and system operators, are among those least at risk of being replaced.

But…Predictions about knowledge workers being replaced by machines have been off the mark before. In 2016, AI research luminary Geoffrey Hinton announced that radiologists—the doctors responsible for interpreting medical imaging—would become obsolete within five years. But fast-forward to 2025:

• The scan specialists are in greater demand than ever, with the Mayo Clinic having grown radiologists’ ranks by 55% since 2016, according to the NY Times.
• While these doctors now leverage AI to help identify abnormalities in scans, they still use their human experience to interpret results and advise other clinicians on care.

Big picture: Jobs requiring creative thinking and soft skills on top of analytical reasoning are less likely to be automated, according to career experts. And it’s become a career advice cliché, but learning to use AI makes a pro less prone to being replaced by it.