Created: May 28, 2025 07:59 AM
A United Nations report says one in four jobs globally are at risk of being changed by generative artificial intelligence (Photograph by Ted Shaffrey/AP)
Bermuda is among high-income countries that face a direct employment threat from artificial intelligence.
More than half of all jobs in such countries, according to a new report, could be changed by the technological revolution.
A quarter of jobs worldwide would be under review as a result of AI, reveals the United Nations report.
Generative AI and Jobs: A Refined Global Index of Occupational Exposure has been released by the UN’s International Labour Organisation.
It ranks different professions on their potential to be impacted by GenAI, an AI subset that can create original content such as text, images and software code.
Professions are divided into six categories ranging from least exposed to highest exposed.
Journalists, financial analysts, receptionists, brokers and actuaries were in the ILO’s two highest categories for exposure.
Trash truck drivers, cleaners, tilers, visual artists and other hands-on professionals, had the least risk of being dramatically changed by GenAI.
According to the ILO white paper, clerical occupations have the highest exposure levels.
“Additionally, some strongly digitised occupations have increased exposure, highlighting the expanding abilities of GenAI regarding specialised tasks in professional and technical roles,” the ILO said.
However, that exposure did not imply the immediate automation of entire occupations, but rather the potential for a large share of tasks to be performed by GenAI.
“Whether this leads to the disappearance of an occupation or workforce replacement is a more complex question,” the ILO said.
It partly depended on the extent that employees were given the chance to learn to use AI tools and evolve with them.
“As most occupations consist of tasks that require human input, transformation of jobs is the most likely impact of GenAI,” researchers said.
The ILO said that with such a high rate of job exposure to GenAI, the transition must be managed through social dialogue. This was to minimise “technological unemployment” and the hardship associated with it, but also to ensure that for the majority who remain employed, the technology supports them in carrying out their jobs.
“Workers know their jobs best and can play an important role in the design, adaptation and use of the tech,” the report said.
The hope is that the refined index will offer a foundation for social dialogue and targeted policy response, to manage the transition to AI.
The report revealed a significant gender disparity in the way people will be touched by GenAI, with 9.6 per cent of all female workers falling into the highest exposure category, compared to 3.5 per cent of all male workers.
This is attributed, partly, to the large number of women in clerical and administrative roles.
The difference in gender impact, and general overall exposure, increased with the country’s income. They make up around 80 per cent of office workers.
The ILO said the key to unlocking GenAI’s full productivity potential lies in the extent to which human expertise can be complemented with new technological capacities to reshape occupations and generate additional value.
The release is an update to the 2023 Global Index of Occupational Exposure to Generative AI, incorporating recent advances in the technology and increasing user familiarity with GenAI tools.
To compile it, researchers used a combination of nearly 30,000 occupational tasks, expert validation, AI-assisted scoring and harmonised global labour data.