Artificial intelligence will cost the world two-thirds of jobs, Goldman Sachs identifies the sectors most affected

The rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to significantly disrupt labor markets around the world. About two-thirds of current jobs in the U.S. and European Union are exposed to some degree of AI automation, according to research by Goldman Sachs.

The administrative and legal sectors are expected to be hit the hardest, with 46% of administrative and 44% of legal jobs expected to be replaceable with AI. Physically demanding jobs such as construction and maintenance face lower exposures of 6% and 4%, respectively, according to CNBCTV18.

Meanwhile, AI is also seen as a tool to increase economic growth. According to Goldman Sachs, AI has the potential to increase annual global GDP by 7% over a 10-year period. Significant labor cost savings, job creation and higher productivity of non-displaced workers are seen as areas that will boost growth.

The study also shows that AI will impact around half of the activities performed by humans across all sectors, and automation will impact almost all professions. However, only about 5% of jobs could be fully automated with currently presented technologies. While the extent of AI’s impact will ultimately depend on its capabilities and implementation timeline, both remain uncertain at this stage.

In the U.S., generative AI is expected to increase annual labor productivity growth by just under 1.5 percentage points over a 10-year period.

Goldman Sachs Experiments with ChatGPT-Style In-House AI

Last week, Goldman Sachs CIO Marco Argenti told CNBC that the company’s software engineers were experimenting with generative artificial intelligence tools to automatically generate lines of code. However, the technology is currently in the proof-of-concept stage and is not yet ready for production. Generative AI products create human-like text or images in response to written prompts from users.

Meanwhile, some banking giants such as JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Bank of America have reportedly restricted employees’ use of ChatGPT and similar products. Still, ChatGPT and other generative AI tools have the potential to shake up the financial services industry, from investment decisions to customer service automation.

Argenti would not provide details of what products Goldman Sachs uses or which branch of the bank uses the technology.