Paris: The forecast of imminent AI-driven mass unemployment is likely to be exaggerated, but employers are looking for workers with different skills as technology matures, a top executive at global recruiter ManPowerGroup told AFP at the Vivedch fair in Paris.
The world's third largest staffing agency by revenue has held a startup contest at Vivedach. There, one candidate was building a system in which a customizable autonomous AI “agents” were hired, rather than humans.
Their services are reminiscent of warnings from Dario Amody, the head of American AI giant humanity last month, that technology can wipe out half of the entry-level white-collar work within a year or five years.
For ManPowerGroup, AI agents “certainly won't become our core business any time soon,” said Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, the company's chief innovation officer.
“If history shows us one thing, that's why most of these predictions are wrong.”
A report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) published in May found that “one in four people around the world are in occupations with some degree of exposure to the capabilities of the generator AI model.” “Now there are very few jobs that are at risk for fully automation,” the ILO added. However, the United Nations agency highlighted the “rapid expansion of AI capabilities since previous research” in 2023. This allows for the emergence of the “agent” model to act autonomously or semi-autonomously and use software such as web browsers and emails.
“Soft Skills”
Chamorro-Premuzic predicted that the adoption of efficiency-enhancing AI tools will put pressure on workers, managers and businesses to make the most of their time they save. “What happens with AI means it helps knowledge workers save 30, 40, and perhaps 50% of their time, but that time will be wasted on social media.
The adoption of AI could allow workers to “give more time to do creative work” or “reduce greater standardization and autonomy in their roles,” the ILO said. There is a general consensus that interpersonal skills and entrepreneurial attitudes become more important for knowledge workers as daily tasks change towards AIS.
Employers identified ethical judgment, customer service, team management and strategic thinking as unsubstitutable in a ManPowerGroup survey of more than 40,000 employers from 42 countries this week.
Nevertheless, training to adopt these new priorities has not increased stepwise due to the adoption of AI, lamented Chamorro-Premuzic. “For each dollar you invest in technology, you need to invest eight or nine in HR, cultural change and change management,” he said. He argued that such a gap suggests that businesses are still chasing automation rather than the frequently stated purpose of increasing the capabilities of human workers with AI.
Will ai hire AI?
One of the areas where AI is most rapidly transforming the world of work is the core business of recruiting talent. But here, candidates employ tools as quickly as recruiters and businesses, confusing the old ways of doing things from the bottom up.
“Candidates can send 500 perfect applications in a day, send bots to interviews, and even play games of the evaluation elements,” says Chamarro-Premuzic. That extreme photo found a survey of over 1,000 job seekers released this week by recruitment platform TestGorilla found that only 17% of applicants admitted testing fraud, and only a few people using AI.
Using JobSeekers' Consumer AI Tools meet recruiters who are doing the same thing. In the same TestGorilla study, almost two-thirds of decision makers of over 1,000 employers used the AI used to generate job descriptions and screen applications.
But much less shares are already using technology to actually interview candidates.
If today's employers focus on candidates' skills in terms of eligibility, Chamorro Premzic predicted that “the next evolution may become obsolete in six months, even if you know the skills that bring to today's table.”
“It's better to know that you're hardworking, that you're interested in, that you have the skills of a good person, and that AI can help you evaluate,” he believes.
