The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) may lead to job losses which could “significantly increase unemployment” an Oireachtas committee was told on Tuesday, with experts warning that entry-level software engineering and legal roles are among the first sectors hit by AI job displacements.
The chair of the AI Advisory Council, Patricia Scanlon, said in her opening remarks to the Joint Committee on Artificial Intelligence that AI has begun to perform roles previously occupied by humans which she said could lead to job losses.
“Even moderate job losses across multiple sectors could significantly increase unemployment,” she said, “but we can’t predict the pace or scale of this, or if lost jobs will be replaced.”
Ms Scanlon called for plans to be developed for “multiple eventualities” noting it is not possible to make long term predictions on the impact on the technology.
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“We need to ensure our tax base can fund ... if there are displacements and there are not replacement jobs,” she said.
Asked which industries would see the first job losses as a result of AI, Sean Blanchfield, the chief executive of AI start up, Jentic and a member of the AI Advisory Council, warned that software roles are first in the firing line.
“Ironically enough, it will be the software engineers,” he said, noting that entry-level programming jobs are “largely replaced by AI now, certainly among the leading companies.”
He said that some software engineering roles have evolved into software architecture roles, with a similar shift taking place in entry-level legal roles. Customer service and jobs in the creative sector were also pointed out as roles that would be likely to be replaced in the sector.
Trinity College Dublin professor in law, Deirdre Ahern, another member of the AI advisory council noted that human roles would still need to be present in the industries to “interrogate the outputs” but that the number of roles would reduced and have a different focus.
Ms Scanlon said the Government needs to put in place an AI Observatory to monitor the real time impacts of AI on jobs and skills “as they happen” noting the State “cannot be reactive” to the impacts of the new technology.
“There is an uncertain future,” Ms Scanlon said under questioning from Sinead Gibney, TD, “One of the issues could very well be around the quality of work, even if there are new jobs or people are transitioning [to them], is it much like the gig workers where there is a lower quality of employment?”
