A new report from the International Monetary Fund found that 40% of global employment will be impacted by artificial intelligence. That number goes up to 60% in more advanced economies. It has many people wondering how their job will be impacted by AI.
Martine Ferland, Mercer CEO, joins Yahoo Finance's Brian Sozzi and Julie Hyman at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland to discuss how AI will be involved in the workplace, how it can and should be regulated, and how it may transform the job market.
Ferland points out: "One aspect that I don't think we talk enough about is we talk about labor shortage, skills shortage in a way, but it's also related to demographics. In many European countries, in particular, we're seeing populations decline. We're seeing populations aging...But if you think about generative AI, if it can accelerate some part of the job, it may be actually helpful to deliver the service that an older population will require, that a younger population active in work, will not be sufficient to render. I think if you think of gen AI in that construct of declining working population size, it's quite interesting, because we need to keep growing. That's the base of our economies."
This interview is part of Yahoo Finance's exclusive coverage from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where our team will speak to top decision-makers as well as preeminent leaders in business, finance, and politics about the world’s most pressing issues and priorities for the coming year.Watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live here.
- We're going to kick things back over to Davos, Switzerland where Brian Sozzi and Julie Hyman are standing by with the Mercer CEO.
JULIE HYMAN: Thanks so much, guys. And indeed, we are here with the CEO of Mercer, Martine Ferland. It's a giant human resources firm with 23,000 of its own employees, but, of course, consults on human resources issues for many, many multiples of that. Martine, thank you so much for being here. First of all, as you know the buzzword of this Davos is AI. And there is concern about jobs. We've been having the AI and jobs conversation with a lot of people, we've been hearing the same thing from a lot of people, which is AI is not necessarily coming for your jobs, it's going to make things easier. Do you think employees believe that?
MARTINE FERLAND: It's interesting because we've just run a quite intensive survey of 16 countries, about 200,000 inputs. And 90-- directionally 90% of employees surveyed said they want to use it, 60% of them are afraid that it will take their job away. So there's a bit of a paradox or a conflicting sentiment towards AI. And will it take some jobs? Definitely. Net net I think we'll need new types of jobs to help us embed AI and maintain AI in the workplace.
And also I do believe that we will be seeing augmented power of the human beings through utilization of AI, generative AI in particular. So I think it's a short term, medium term, long term thing. You might see it-- in the short term, it will take time before it's at scale. In the medium term, there might be some movements. But I think in the long term, like many other technology, we'll see just a shift of what's required, but I don't think it will take away-- it will take away some jobs, but it'll create some new jobs.
BRIAN SOZZI: With the companies and leaders that you talk to, are they prepared to upskill their workforce. How much are they investing in this?
MARTINE FERLAND: Yeah it's-- there's a lot of talk. But at the same time, you know what's interesting in the same survey is that 50% of the people surveyed said they were using it at least once a week. So what's interesting with gen AI is that it is so easy for us to understand what it does. Maybe not how it does it but what it does. We can all think about I'll prompt it to create a first draft of this or do research on that, give me a summary. So we get it. And I think there's power and we're talking to our clients about that to your question. But lifting all boats, because it's a bit like internet, everybody uses it today.
So very, very quickly we'll see-- we see everybody starting to use it for different usage like in personal, professional. And therefore, I think, first of all, we need to democratize access. We need to do it in a way that's controlling the risk of you sharing your data out. Companies are very, very keen on protecting the data that they hold, but at the same time benefiting from this. So there's that.
And then where are they-- I think 2023 for generative AI was a year of 1,000 flowers blooming. And now what you're seeing, to your point about investment, apart from broad-based access and training, it's also OK we've piloted so many different things, where do you-- where do we think there's more value to us to scale some of these ideas. So we'll pick our spot a bit more in '24 and we'll scale some application, whether they are for efficiencies, for employee experience, for client experience.
JULIE HYMAN: A lot of people have said to us we've had lots of technological innovation in the past where people were afraid of losing jobs and most of that proved to be unfounded. But there have been some other types of changes, I think of trade changes, for example, NAFTA in the United States where people did lose jobs or at least jobs shifted around. How do we know what's going to happen?
MARTINE FERLAND: Who knows. But it's impossible to think jobs won't be shifting around a bit. And I think we are completely underestimating the type of work that will be transformed. You started seeing lists of these jobs more than those jobs. But who knows because this is going so fast, it's learning so fast. But one aspect that I don't think we talk enough about is we talk about labor shortage, skills shortage in a way, but it's also related to demographics. In many European countries, in particular, we're seeing populations decline. We're seeing populations aging. So there's all kinds of things related to that.
But if you think about generative AI, if it can accelerate some part of the job, it may be, actually, helpful to deliver the service that an older population will require that a younger population active in work will not be sufficient to render. So I think if you think of Gen AI in that construct of declining working population size, it's quite interesting because we need to keep growing. That's the base of our economies.
JULIE HYMAN: So in other words, you're saying if there is this roll off of people retiring and the overall workforce is shrinking, that if we're making the existing workforce more productive that that will be helpful.
MARTINE FERLAND: Exactly.
JULIE HYMAN: Interesting.
MARTINE FERLAND: We also, at the same time, need to make sure the older population continues to be productive longer because they live longer they need to finance a longer life. But it's part of the solution, I think.
BRIAN SOZZI: Are you in the camp that as AI spreads it will create more inequality?
MARTINE FERLAND: That's a danger. That's definitely a risk. So AI, as we all say, there's the risk of data leaks, the risk of errors and falseness. But there's the risk also of who has access again. So you need to be very careful. I was having some discussion with the European today and they were looking at digitalizing the world, giving access to Europeans on Wi-Fi across everywhere because that will be the entry point. If you don't have access to that, how can you have access to AI. So absolutely I think there is a risk of the gap widening.
It's interesting. I don't know the-- in the US, for example, the gap that had been widening for 40 years has started to shrink a little bit in the last couple of years since the pandemic has kind of ended. So we'll need to be very watchful of any effect that way in access.
JULIE HYMAN: Martine Ferland, CEO of Mercer. Thank you so much. Good to see you again.
MARTINE FERLAND: My pleasure. Thank you for having me.
