How Automation Could Affect Your Salary

It’s AI Week at BBC, and we’re looking at how rising automation will affect workers and businesses now and down the line.?

Will workers be paid differently in the age of AI?

Artificial intelligence is already finding its way into daily workflows for many employees, and necessitating others to think about the?AI skills they’ll need to keep their jobs secure?when companies embrace the technology.

AI may chip away at some of the most rote types of work, but experts have been clear?AI won’t steal all our jobs. Most likely, they say, employees will work in concert with machines, and workers’ roles may become more sophisticated as AI eliminates repetitive and manual tasks. Ideally, employees will instead spend their time focusing on?the uniquely human tasks that AI isn’t currently positioned to usurp?– i.e. creative approaches to problem solving, interpersonal communication – and be able to generate more, better output.

If workers transition into more intellectually demanding roles, or see their productivity spike when they harness AI’s benefits, it’s tempting to believe wages will evolve in parallel. After all, if job descriptions are changing, and workers are contributing more, compensation should theoretically follow.?

However, experts say the outlook may be more complicated for workers of all skill levels – and depending on the jobs they do, the outcomes may be different.

Read more from Megan Morrone on what could happen to your pay.

Is AI Gen Z’s silver bullet?

Gen Z has had a hard landing into the workforce. Starting jobs amid the global pandemic, many of these new workers have?missed out on gaining essential hard- and soft skills?usually gleaned by working alongside older colleagues.

However, as the first truly digital generation, their innate fluency with technology could help them make up some of that ground – especially as AI becomes a hugely important part of the modern workplace.

Emma Parry , a professor of human resource management and head of the Changing World of Work Group at Cranfield School of Management, UK, has seen how Gen Z’s openness to new technology is putting them at the forefront of this new way of working.

“With AI, people tend to fall into a?dystopian?or?utopian?outlook, and younger people normally fall into the latter,” she says. “While there isn’t huge amounts of quality research into this yet, anecdotally, young people are more accepting and willing to adapt AI into their daily lives and at work.”

Stephanie Forrest , founder of TFD, a London-based strategic communications consultancy in the tech space, has seen first-hand how Gen Z employees use AI technology with ease, and are quickly becoming essential in the workplace. “They don’t question [the technology] – they simply see it as a way to optimise what they are already doing.”?

At TFD, she says, Gen Z were the first employees to experiment with generative AI tools such as Open AI’s ChatGPT for tasks including admin, research and email composition. "Since AI is so new for everyone, it puts Gen Z employees on a level footing with other members of a team, providing them with a way to meaningfully contribute. AI enables forward-looking companies to learn from younger employees, in terms of how they use technology to be more efficient," says Forrest.

Professor Weiguo Patrick Fan at the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business, US, notes how many young people are prioritising learning these skills as a “strategic career move”, whether through experimenting in their personal lives, taking online courses or pursuing traditional educational avenues.

This knowledge can help Gen Z contribute to businesses in ways their less AI-fluent colleagues may not be able to, which can make younger employees especially valuable to their employers. “Gen Z employees can leverage their AI knowledge to innovate and streamline processes and help bridge the gap between technical and non-technical roles,” says Fan.

Read more from Elizabeth Bennett on whether AI can help Gen Z workers make up lost ground.

AI can threaten your personal identity – but it doesn't have to

When Jessica’s boss recently asked whether the company she works for should be using artificial intelligence tools, she quietly panicked. As a content marketer, her major responsibilities at the Connecticut, US-based software company are writing and editing – tasks that generative AI software threatens to usurp.

But Jessica’s fear isn’t exactly about losing her job.

“Writing has always been my?thing,” she says. “I wrote stories as a kid. I was an English major, and then a journalist before I got into content marketing. I’ve never done anything else; I don’t really have any other skill set, which is pretty terrifying.”

An increasing body of research shows?many workers fear artificial intelligence displacing their jobs, especially in creative industries, where tools like Open AI’s ChatGPT have already made sophisticated strides in generative learning. Some recent surveys show the worry is pervasive:?workers across different generations and demographic groups report feeling threatened.

Yet for Jessica, and others like her, the real threat of AI is a personal – even existential – one. Along with feeling personally out to sea, she worries about her workplace value – that her professional identity will no longer be important. She’s also fearful about what she’ll do – and, ultimately, whom she’ll be – if her job as a writer is eliminated.

This, says Mindy Shoss , a professor of organizational psychology at the University of Central Florida, is understandable – and that plenty of people can relate to the feeling. “The crux of a lot of AI anxiety is about identity. Work fulfils many different identity functions,” she says. “Yes, it gives us income, but it also gives us a sense of self-worth and belonging and opportunities to develop new skills, and meaningfulness in life. When our work is threatened, all these other things get threatened with it.”

Job threats aside, Shoss says the uncertainty alone is enough to cause concern. “Anxiety comes from the unknown,” she says. “The development of AI is happening so quickly that it’s really hard to keep up with. There’s so much unknown right now, and so much speculation about what AI can do, will do, might do. It’s very understandable and appropriate that people are experiencing some anxiety.”?

This feeling of unease and existential panic can be extremely unnerving – and entirely justified in the current work landscape. But there’s reason to take a breath: as this technology finds its way into the mainstream and continues to evolve, experts say these worries don’t have to take over.

Read more from Kate Morgan on why you can relax about AI.

Find more from BBC’s AI Week, and visit BBC Worklife?and?BBC Business for the latest.

–Meredith Turits, Editor, BBC Worklife