The World Economic Forum has predicted that AI will displace 85 million jobs by 2025. It’s a scary headline figure that has many professionals worried; many are looking at upskilling, reskilling and retraining for jobs that may be of less interest to robots.
For all the worries about job losses, however, there’s another figure: the WEF also estimates that AI will create 97 million jobs, a net growth of 12 million jobs.
Last year, for instance, one of the most in-demand tech roles was “prompt engineer”. This is a new role – and one that few would have imagined 10 years ago – which is all about optimising the outputs of generative AI (GenAI) models through giving it prompts designed to help it understand precisely what it is being asked to do.
We spoke to experts across four industries and asked: just what sort of jobs will emerge in the coming years?
Luke McDonnell, head of public relations at Huawei Ireland, points out that major business revolutions have always occurred every 30 to 50 years.
“Over the next 30 years, AI will become a basic force of production that drives the economy, rather than just a suite of technologies geared toward testing. Roles will be augmented by AI, rather than replaced,” he says.
Susanne Jeffery is HR transformation and technology director at PwC Ireland.
“PwC’s 2024 AI jobs barometer indicates that openings for jobs that require specialist AI skills have grown 3.5 times faster than openings for all jobs since 2016,” Jeffery says.
“Roles such as AI ethicists will be crucial in ensuring that AI systems operate within ethical boundaries and do not perpetuate biases.
“It is also expected that roles such as AI-generated work auditors will emerge, tasked with scrutinising content for quality, accuracy and ethical compliance.
“Given the importance of guiding the development of AI systems, we expect to see roles such as data curators for managing and organising the vast amounts of data required to train sophisticated AI models, and AI trainers who will ensure AI operates effectively and efficiently.
“All of these roles will require a blend of technical expertise, creativity and ethical awareness, making them pivotal in the AI-driven future.”
Tim Bergin, EY Ireland people consulting partner, says that AI can have a transformative, positive and far-reaching impact on all businesses.
“Here in EY Ireland, we employ more than 300 people in our AI and data analytics practice, which brings together experts across artificial intelligence, data analytics, technology and business to help organisations harness the potential of AI and reimagine the way they do business.
There are core skills that will require the workforce to be upskilled at scale such as prompt engineering to ensure that our people can use generative AI (GenAI) effectively to enhance their work.
“With the significant difference in implementing GenAI versus more traditional AI technologies, we’ll also see the emergence of specific roles in GenAI content curation, GenAI interaction design and a new world of AI support and maintenance skills.”
But Bergin adds that GenAI developers themselves only need limited upskilling, as they already have the training and knowledge to develop technologies.
“If, however, we introduce a GenAI solution which releases 10 per cent capacity in a role, we must actively design what to do with that newly released capacity.
“Will we focus on upskilling in human-centred capabilities like emotional intelligence and empathy to enhance workplace interactions and effective teaming? Will we consolidate newly released capacity across whole teams or functions which may require job redesign and functional redesign?
“There are endless permutations and possibilities, but the core organisational capability to enable this is agility.”
Dr Alan Smeaton is professor of computing at DCU and a member of the Government’s advisory council on AI.
“AI will [create] technical roles in data science, machine learning, ethics and regulatory conformance,” he says.
“But it is not so much the new technical roles that will have the impact – it is the job displacement that GenAI is already bringing. All reports on this topic indicate that a huge proportion of people’s jobs will change, maybe a little or maybe a lot, as a result of GenAI. The change will be greater than the new roles.”
Jeffery points out that there is a monetary benefit associated with new jobs that require AI specialist skills.
“According to our 2024 AI jobs barometer, these roles may carry up to a 25 per cent wage premium in some markets,” she says.
“For existing roles, we expect that AI will have a significant positive impact on productivity and efficiency. Sectors that are especially exposed to AI, such as financial services, IT and professional services, are experiencing nearly five times higher growth in labour productivity. We can also look forward to top- and bottom-line benefits, with 46 per cent of global CEOs saying it will increase profitability.”
Jeffery says that AI demands a significant need for training and development, which is both business and employee-driven.
“AI is significantly enhancing productivity across various industries by automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks,” she says.
“This automation allows employees to redirect their efforts toward more strategic activities. Notably, financial services, IT, and professional services (sectors with higher AI exposure) are experiencing nearly five times faster productivity growth compared to sectors with lower AI adoption, such as transport, manufacturing, and construction.”
McDonnell says that AI skills need to be part of an overall digital skills education mix.
“Digital skills programmes should incorporate new ways to learn AI and ICT in primary and higher-education curricula. Additionally, providing EU-wide free data, statistics, and AI courses for all adults and children would be beneficial.”
Planning for an AI-driven future can be challenging, but it’s not impossible, says Jeffrey. “Companies can start by cultivating a culture of flexibility and continuous learning, focusing on AI-related skills – investing in broad-based AI training programs that encourage innovative thinking is essential to this. It is also vital that companies understand the AI trends that could benefit their business, allowing them to anticipate emerging roles.”
But Smeaton strikes some notes of caution.
“There’s a hype around the role of ‘prompt engineer’, but engineering is based on sound theories and maths,” he says.
“Prompt engineer has no theory behind it, no foundation, no background, it is just practice and experience and a lot of guesswork and it varies from one large language model (LLM) to another. So you could become an ‘expert’ in Gemini but that doesn’t mean you’d be an expert in Copilot or GPT or Claude. It is a role that is hyped now, but in a few years it will have disappeared.”
Smeaton is also concerned about AI literacy as this new technology rolls out rapidly.
“It is continuously updating and developing,” he says.
“Every week there is a new announcement, a newer, bigger, better LLM, a new application and we’re in this frenzy of development because companies can see there is a huge market up for grabs.
“That makes AI literacy a huge challenge and the most important thing I can say about it is that training and upskilling needs to be continuous. This isn’t a once-off course or module you can take and say that you’re done, this needs to be almost perpetual and sustained in order to keep up.”