Artificial intelligence may disrupt many Kansas City jobs — and not the ones you think
Automation isn’t targeting just the factory line.
Artificial intelligence will disrupt many more jobs than previously predicted, according to a new study from the Brookings Institute. Unlike robotics that generally overtake rote tasks, AI can more closely replicate the work of humans by detecting patterns, learning and evolving.
That means AI could affect the work of all occupational groups, particularly disrupting the labor of highly educated and highly paid professionals that work in business, finance and technology, the report says. And the Kansas City metro area, with more than 1 million jobs, will be disproportionately affected.
The Brookings study, released Wednesday, found that large, urban areas, along with Midwestern cities, are most susceptible to AI’s disruption. The Kansas City area ranked 16th among the nation’s 100 largest metro areas for exposure to AI-related job changes, Brookings found. The Wichita area ranked 19th.
About one in five Kansas City jobs are predicted to have a high exposure to AI and more than half the jobs in the metro have a medium or high exposure.
The industries most affected here include those in computers, math, legal, business and finance, said Brookings, a Washington-based public policy organization. The report says affected jobs may not necessarily be replaced by AI. But it does predict that automation will leave a much larger imprint on the white-collar workforce than previously expected.
“It underscores that no one is immune to technology change,” said Mark Muro, policy director at the Brookings Institute’s Metropolitan Policy Program. “This is not just somebody else’s problem.”
While it’s easy to think of automation in the context of factory robots or software, Muro said AI’s tentacles will reach far deeper into the jobs of the future: The report references jobs like radiologists, optometrists, management analysts and engineers.
So what’s the lesson for workers? Rather than focusing on just credentials like college degrees, Muro said it will be increasingly important to develop human skills like teamwork, judgment and management to thrive in rapidly changing workplaces.
“This points out that simply obtaining a lot of education in itself may not provide resilience,” he said. “It is very clear from this that better educated workers will actually be highly involved in automation in the form of AI.”
He believes governments must push companies to use automation technology ethically and provide training and retraining opportunities for current workers.
The Brookings analysis examined the text of AI patents and job descriptions to identify the kinds of tasks and occupations most likely to be disrupted. It frequently found verbs like recognize, control, determine and generate used to describe new technologies.
While many occupations will be affected, Brookings found some insulated industries. Hands-on workers like cooks, dental assistants and welders are predicted to have less exposure to AI in the future.
The changing nature of work is somewhat masked by the current labor market: the Kansas City metro area’s unemployment rate sank to 2.5 percent in September, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But Muro said employers will likely adopt disruptive workplace technology faster during an economic downturn.
Some of that disruption can prove fruitful, improving workplace productivity and even creating new kinds of jobs.
“While it holds out tremendous opportunities, it does raise the possibility of significant change in stress and adjustment for workers,” he said. “I don’t think the current tight labor market is the whole story about the durability of work.”
