Burning Glass Institute Chief Economist Gad Levanon joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss concerns over job displacement from advancing artificial intelligence.

Levanon says generative AI's ability to absorb knowledge and generate content is "more likely to impact white-collar jobs" rather than manual or service roles requiring human skills.

He notes that within "a matter of time," simple coding and other routine digital tasks could lose value as large-language models replicate them. This may gradually result in "overstaffing" and necessitate "a reduction in workforce" in some white-collar areas.

However, Levanon emphasizes generative AI cannot replace jobs requiring building personal relationships and emotional intelligence.

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Editor's note: This article was written by Angel Smith

Video Transcript

[AUDIO LOGO]

- A new report out from the Burning Glass Institute and SHRM suggests white collar jobs in fields like finance and tech will be impacted, the most by gender AI. Joining us now is Gad Lebanon, Burning Glass Institute Chief economist. Gad, thank you so much for joining us.

GAD LEVANON: My pleasure.

- So the report suggests, Gad, that GenAI which is for example behind chat bots like ChatGPT is going to have a big impact potentially on white collar jobs. How Gad, and which job sectors particular?

GAD LEVANON: Sure. Well, generative AI is all about large language models. So it's all about using language to both get knowledge and create content out of that, generate content out of it. So those functions or abilities are more likely to impact white collar jobs that deal with language and less more physical abilities that most, let's say, blue collar workers have. It turns out that human bodies are a completely-- a very sophisticated machine. After millions of years of evolution in its pretty hard to completely automated.

But language is actually much easier.

- Surprisingly, perhaps. It's interesting that this report coming out now. There's also a post from Paul Donovan who's an economist over UBS where he talked about the concept of stranded assets, assets that lose their value more quickly than anticipated. And he suggested a skill like coding, for example, or other STEM skills could end up being stranded assets. And it's amazing because coding was the job to have.

So how should people think about the impact that this is going to have on the workforce and the economy?

GAD LEVANON: Well, coding is a good example. I think sophisticated coding is likely to remain a hot skill. But simple coding, I think, that's in, it's a matter of time. And in some cases already exists that you can code with simple English. Like you don't need to learn a specific programming language to do that. So people who work mostly in simple coding, they-- I think, their skills are going to lose their value to some degree.