Artificial Intelligence (AI) – Tasks will be augmented, not automated

Despite technological strides forward, this year’s Future of Jobs report suggests that businesses are becoming more sceptical about the potential for artificial intelligence to fully automate work tasks. Executives estimate that 34% of tasks are already automated – just one percentage point ahead of the figure reported in the Future of Jobs Report 2020.

Future expectations for automation are also being revised down, as markets climb the human-machine landscape more slowly than previously anticipated. Respondents to this year’s survey forecast that an additional 9% of operational tasks will be automated in the next five years – a reduction of five percentage points compared to expectations in 2020.

The difference is a growing consensus that artificial intelligence will augment human performance rather than fully supplanting it. For example, a survey of AI experts published in June last year showed that most managerial skills are likely to be augmented rather than automated by AI.

Only information gathering and simple decision-making are likely to be fully automated, and leadership and imagination skills will be largely unaffected by AI.

Source: AI: 3 ways artificial intelligence will change the future of work | World Economic Forum