By THE HILL
Published on May 16, 2024
Worker productivity gains enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) are concentrated at the lower end of the skill and income spectrum, a phenomenon that economists and labor unions warn could supercharge the practice of outsourcing jobs to lower paid regions of the globe.
Several recent studies show introducing language-based AI software in the workplace benefits less-skilled workers more than highly skilled ones, which could make lower-skilled work more valuable and pull more higher-paid jobs overseas.
“If you take the case of generative AI aiding low-skilled workers in particular, that gives businesses the opportunity to replace more skilled workers with less skilled, lower wage labor,” Carl Benedikt Frey, an economist at Oxford University, told The Hill.
“It might even [lead to] a significant wave of offshoring as businesses begin to take advantage of large pools of cheap labor in places like India, Bangladesh, and the Philippines where there are huge wage disparities,” he said.