AI will displace many white-collar roles … but not quite yet

The rise of artificial intelligence has many white-collar professionals around the world worried. From lawyers to creatives, there is real fear that AI could soon replace the roles they do.

Many firms in the UAE are embracing new tools to automate tasks – no surprises in a country that wants to be number one for AI use. Often, senior staff find them a work in progress and say AI tools cannot yet replace skilled workers.

About a quarter of the 200 professionals polled by The National on LinkedIn say they are worried that AI will affect their jobs in future – but not right now.

On the plus side, more than half claim the technology has made their job easier. Seven per cent – admittedly from a small polling base – say their role has already been replaced by AI.

Among the most vulnerable are content writers in media, advertising and marketing.

Sreejith NK, a content writer for a corporate services company in Dubai, said AI has already disrupted his job. “Before the advent of AI, I enjoyed commanding power in the company, especially while negotiating salary hikes,” he told The National.

“But the other day the company offered me two options: either search for a new job or become a remote freelancer for them at half the salary. I accepted the second option due to my financial commitments.”

His company believes AI can produce and craft content, and a junior worker on a lower salary can check it over to save on marketing costs, Mr Sreejith said.

“I believe AI has diminished the relevance of content writers and minimised our negotiating power,” he added.

But more skilled or hands-on roles are generally safe for now, said David Mackenzie, of recruitment agency Mackenzie Jones. He believes it will take five to 10 years before it causes major job disruption in the UAE.

AI can only replace repetitive processes, he said. “AI is currently not sophisticated enough to do the roles of senior white-collar professionals that count on experience,” he added. “As a senior person, you’ll stay in your job for the next 10 years.”

Mr Mackenzie said roles in technology, health care diagnostics, insurance and tellers in banking, where there are repetitive processes, would be affected by AI.

Speciality roles

Similarly, transactional roles in financial services may be affected by AI but not decision-making jobs, said Oscar Orellana-Hyder of executive search firm Cordell Partners.

Fund and investment managers are currently experimenting with AI to understand cost-benefit analysis and check whether automation can replace a junior worker, he said.

“Junior roles could potentially be replaced but there is no threat of immediate displacement,” Mr Orellana-Hyder said. “For example, an execution trader, executing orders from a portfolio manager, could potentially be replaced over time.

“Senior-level roles are relatively insulated from AI because of the decision-making involved, seniority, tenure at the firm and respect gained over years.”

The International Monetary Fund says nearly 60 per cent of jobs in advanced economies may be affected by AI – though only about half of those might suffer negatively, while the rest could benefit from enhanced productivity.

The World Economic Forum projects that by 2030, AI and automation could eliminate 75 million jobs while creating 133 million more, a net gain of 58 million roles.

Al-Futtaim, one of the Middle East’s largest private sector employers with 33,000 staff, said AI is positively affecting a variety of roles across the conglomerate. It is also leading to the creation of new roles.

“AI-driven automation has absorbed many of the repetitive, data-intensive tasks that were previously a drain on our teams’ time,” said Himanshu Shrivastava, chief technology officer. “This has allowed our employees to shift their focus towards higher-value activities such as strategic planning, creative problem-solving and building stronger customer relationships.”

Upskilling for 1,000 staff in the space of a few months and the creation of new roles, including data officers, are a major focus, he said.

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Citing strong demand for expertise in data science, analytics and machine-learning roles, Mr Shrivastava highlighted popular roles in the tech world such as AI product management, prompt engineering, AI architects, AI ethics experts and AI security experts, among others.

AI shortcomings

Sakher Al Adaileh, managing partner of consulting firm Velocity Growth, said AI is becoming a “real force” in creative, analytical and executional roles. Although it is less embedded is in decision-making roles, where AI can be trusted is to respond to customer queries quickly and project budgets, but it still needs a human in the loop.

“We experiment with AI a lot but have seen it drop the ball many times, hence there’s always a human element to varying degrees in our AI-powered workstreams,” he said. “AI is only as good as the model it’s trained on but a human can read between the lines.”

Perplexity AI has made research so much faster that business development teams can spend more time engaging with clients instead of gathering background information, he said.

Also, a few designers with AI-based design tools can now do the work of a much larger team. Machine-learning models such as Meta’s Prophet or Google’s Bert help produce forecasts and sentiment analysis within hours, “work that used to take days or even weeks of manual effort only a year or two ago”, he said.

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