The analysts say that AI and similar technologies like robots, drones and other autonomous vehicles will increase opportunities of employment in China by 12% in over the next 20 years, which would be approximately 90 million new job openings.
These technologies are set to not only boost China’s fiscal growth but also generate millions of new job opportunities, more than offsetting displacement of the current jobs. Though these new technologies could actually displace approximately 20% of the present UK jobs by 2037, but would also create an equally big number of new jobs by pumping economic growth.
As compared to the UK estimates, China is predicted to experience a bigger chunk of job displacement (26% vs. 20%) because of the more scope for automation in the manufacturing and agriculture sectors in China. But this is, in fact, more than offset by the huge anticipated boost to GDP in China by using AI and related technologies, which will eventually result into a much larger extent of job creation in the country (38%) as compared to the UK (20%).
The studies also noted that a lot of sectors will be benefiting from using AI and robotics and the major one will be healthcare. It is also important to understand that most of the additional jobs that will be created would have no direct link to AI or robots, but would be a resultant of a more affluent society, which in turn creates more demand of goods and services in general.
This also proves bigger opportunities for business in terms of investments in AI and similar technologies in China, which cover all domains of operations like marketing and product personalization, productive efficiency, R&D, human resource functions and also cybersecurity. However, there is a warning that a big disruption is likely to happen to all the present business models in every sector of the economy, as it is already noticed in media and entertainment and finance and retail.
As China is moving rapidly towards innovation and uniqueness, the industrial employment is expected to move from labour-intensive and low value production to more higher value, such as those used in manufacturing AI-enabled tools for both domestic market and export. Though the studies predict that the long-term consequence of AI on the job market is going to be optimistic for China, the transition phase towards an AI-based economy would cause some commotion to the existing labour markets because millions of workers would have to look for a change of career and maybe also locations. China has a grand Next Generation AI Plan, which aims hefty investments in the area of skill development. Having said that, this will also require some balancing by bringing in more refresher training and recruitment support for the displaced workers.
Therefore, any job which is at a “high risk” of going under automation does not necessarily mean that it’s going to be surely automated. This is because there are many financial, legal and other regulatory, and organizational roadblocks in the road to adopt AI and similar technologies. For China, it is estimated that though about 40% jobs could be considered for automation by 2037, only one-fourth of the current Chinese jobs will be displaced in reality around this period, as against 38% job creation.
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