Legal and finance jobs are among the most at risk from AI, while construction and trade jobs face minimal influence, studies suggest

12 comments

  2. This whole thing is a fascinating development. When different types of automation started displacing low skilled workers, everyone was just telling them to go and become programmers. Will we now see people telling all junior lawyer wannabes to go become carpenters?
    But yeah, to answer your question, Luxembourg is probably heading for a rude awakening and I am really hoping we have a government that will be able to navigate it. Societies have always adapted, there is no need to assume that some kind of an apocalypse is around the corner. But that a lot might need to change (including getting more if not carpenters then at least nurses and similar and fewer young lawyers), yeah, that might happen.

  3. The article doesn’t go into much detail, but as someone who worked at customer service I have a feeling that we will be just fine for a long while. Why? About 40% of my job was googling, 40% was opening up our site and copy pasting information that can be reached by 3 clicks, and 20% was actual problem solving. Much of the work was trying to figure out what the customer even wanted – sometimes because they were upset and rambling, and sometimes because they had poor language skills, lots of typos, etc.

    Currently I am working in finance (more tech related part) and I can tell that a lot of people in serious positions have near zero Excel or technical knowledge.

    I believe that it will be a great tool to assist those who already have some problem solving skills because many people don’t even know what questions to ask exactly about something, or in other words what prompts to use for an AI. Here on reddit and for generally tech savvy people (the majority of those who use the Internet for other than watching videos/social media/reading news) it is almost impossible to imagine how high percent of the population have near zero technical skills.

    Another thing I would point out is that the world of finance is using automated methods for a long while now. This will probably improve those methods but I wouldn’t go as far that AI will completely overtake everything finance related. Among many reasons the most simple one is that most people will never trust an automated system to fully control their finances.

  4. Its not a bad choice to be in finance. Currently in finance we still do a ridiculous amount of manual monkey work and if we could at least reduce it a bit, Id be super happy actually.

    This news of accounting being done is not news. Its “news” all since 2008 actually and the last crisis

    Also I can send you articles from that time that auditors will also not exist anymore.

    All in all, accounting, finance and legal jobs will DEFINITELY change with or without AI, but AI will not eat our jobs in our lifetime.

    This current climate reminds me also of the Economist announcing that within a few years truck drivers will also not exist anymore and that companies such as Nikola ( electric trucks basically, drived by AI of course) will dominate the market in a few years.

    Nikola today is complete garbage. We are not even a step closer to autonomous driving. People still drink, drive and die. Absolutely nothing changed and nothing will change even there. Unfortunately.

  5. People tend to forget that financial markets are favourably volataile due to human behaviour. If every investment firm has a super trading AI, the market will be in perfect equilibrium, stagnent and nobody can make money out of it…

    There is a need for uncertainty to gain money or to have good entertainment in life. We live and work for entertainment purposes! There is a reason that academics and researchers are badly paid, because they do not contribute a lot for entertainment.

  6. Jobs won’t disappear completely. Just as with mining, factories, harbours, etc., AI will increase productivity per worker and reduce the number of required workers. Given that legal and finance have a reputation for making people work long hours, that might be a good thing.

  9. Without a doubt.
    Anything from reading reports, analysing and transferring data will be replaceable, and won’t even need AI, just good old text processing capabilities. Repetitive tasks will always be prone to automation.

    But AI models are far from perfect and especially in the legal profession and contracts in which capitalizing or not a letter has 2 different meanings, means that the talk is also a bit overblown.

    I think it will help increase price and quality transparency especially in law firms though where you would basically pay 400/h for some junior lawyer to be trained on your file.

    Jobs that offer high-value advice will remain unaffected.

    Ultimately though it will make investing more affordable for everyone which is a good thing.

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