AI could replace 40% of American jobs, says report

The Times  -  About 40 per cent of American jobs could be replaced by artificial intelligence, according to a report by the McKinsey Global Institute.

The American consultancy’s analysis found that robots and AI agents could automate more than half of US work hours, both manual and cognitive, using technology that is available today, if companies redesigned how they did things.

Most of the roles at risk involve the kinds of drafting, processing information and routine reasoning that AI agents can do. Hiring is slowing in some such jobs, such as among paralegals, administrative and office support workers and programmers, the research found.

Similarly, dangerous, physical jobs, in warehouses or operating machines, are most likely to be replaced by robots, McKinsey said.

Conversely, a third of US jobs would be difficult to replace with AI because they have uniquely human attributes, such as nursing, the analysis found. Some 70 per cent of the tasks performed by carers and other healthcare workers require the kind of physical presence, empathy, care and dexterity that machines cannot replicate.

Building maintenance and repair work which demands flexibility, judgment and thinking on the job, often in unpredictable environments, is similarly unlikely to be automated