Report From PwC Says AI Won't Kill The Job Market, But Keep It Steady

The solid line in the charts represents the net effect of AI, with the bars showing the displacement and income effects.Graphic via PricewaterhouseCoopers It's impossible to say precisely how artificial intelligence will disrupt the job market, so researchers at PwC have taken a birds eye view from the top down, and pointed to the results of sweeping economic changes. Their prediction, in a new report out Tuesday, is that it'll all balance out in the end. But the rise in robots and machine-learning software will make the country more productive over the next two decades, growing at a 2% annual clip, to put nearly the same number of jobs back in the system: 7.2 million, PwC estimates. To be clear those new jobs won't involve building robots or coding AI-powered software, which will only make up around 5% of employment, says John Hawksworth, PwC's chief economist. Instead around 1.5 million, or 22%, of the new jobs will be in health and social work.