AI is not only reducing jobs: an infrastructure boom is creating hundreds of thousands of new vacancies
Despite the wave of fears about mass layoffs caused by artificial intelligence, AI’s greatest impact on the labor market so far may turn out to be quite different. Investments in data centers, power grids, energy, and computing infrastructure are creating significantly more jobs than are directly being eliminated through automation.
As The Economist writes, localized job cuts associated with the implementation of AI are estimated at approximately 200,000 jobs, while the investment boom surrounding the new technological infrastructure could generate around one million new vacancies.
The biggest beneficiaries are not only programmers and machine-learning specialists. Demand is growing rapidly for electricians, construction workers, installers, power-system engineers, cooling specialists, data-center operators, and other workers without whom AI cannot be scaled.
The reason is simple: modern models require enormous amounts of computing power and electricity. Therefore, technology companies are investing billions of dollars not only in chips and software, but also in physical infrastructure—from new data centers to power plants and grid modernization.
The Economist points out that the discussion about “AI taking away jobs” often ignores this second effect. Automation can indeed eliminate some office jobs, but at the same time it creates strong demand for new specialties and restores value to many technical and manual professions.
In other words, for now the picture looks less like the global destruction of jobs and more like a large-scale restructuring of the labor market.
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