Labour market risks
Current general-purpose AI is likely to transform the nature of many existing jobs, create new jobs, and eliminate others. The net impact on employment and wages will vary significantly across countries, across sectors, and even across different workers within the same job.
ENTITY
3 - Other
INTENT
3 - Other
TIMING
2 - Post-deployment
Risk ID
mit1027
Domain lineage
6. Socioeconomic and Environmental
6.2 > Increased inequality and decline in employment quality
Mitigation strategy
1. Prioritize strategic investment in comprehensive reskilling and upskilling programs to cultivate human-AI complementarity skills, such as critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and domain-specific expertise. This should include fostering lifelong learning and encouraging immediate, hands-on employee engagement with AI tools to facilitate task-reallocation toward roles offering a comparative human advantage. 2. Establish and reinforce robust social safety nets and government policies to mitigate the financial impact of large-scale displacement, particularly for disproportionately affected demographics. Key measures include strengthening unemployment support, ensuring benefit portability, reducing occupational licensing barriers, and incentivizing firms (e.g., via tax credits) to invest in incumbent worker training rather than external hiring. 3. Mandate and enforce ethical AI governance frameworks that focus on augmenting, rather than purely automating, human labor, thereby preserving worker autonomy and career pathways. Crucially, this requires the rigorous auditing of AI systems used in employment decisions (e.g., recruitment, performance review) to actively detect and neutralize algorithmic bias, ensuring equitable outcomes and preventing the exacerbation of existing workplace inequalities.