AI Talent Shortage: Does Artificial Intelligence Create Jobs or Disrupt the Labor Market?
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ChatGPT has ignited the global development of large-scale models. By combining big data, massive computing power, and advanced algorithms, these models achieve deep understanding of the world. Big data provides rich knowledge, massive computing power enables models to learn this knowledge quickly and effectively, while advanced algorithms help optimize parameters and extract useful information. The integration of these three dimensions endows large models with powerful comprehension capabilities, enabling them to better understand and generate human language, handle more complex tasks such as text comprehension and image recognition, thereby significantly enhancing AI capabilities.
Does Artificial Intelligence Create Jobs or Disrupt the Labor Market?
The International Labour Organization (ILO) recently released a research report expressing an optimistic view on AI's impact on the labor market, stating that generative AI is more likely to create jobs rather than disrupt the labor market.
The report indicates that most jobs and industries have only achieved partial automation. Therefore, the primary impact of generative AI on employment is that by automating certain tasks, it allows people more time to focus on other responsibilities. Rather than entirely replacing entire professions, it supplements job positions, transforming work quality, particularly in terms of work intensity and autonomy.
To better empower various industries with AI technology, businesses are increasingly active, accelerating integration with the existing labor market and operational entities.
Recently, OpenAI, a U.S.-based AI company, held its first developer conference and released an updated version of ChatGPT. The enhanced product's efficiency and functionality have drawn significant industry attention. However, professionals have raised concerns that employment conditions in multiple sectors may face further short-term impacts.
The influence of AI on employment across many industries has been widely reported in U.S. and European media. Bloomberg reported that the preliminary agreement between the Screen Actors Guild and film producers includes clauses on AI usage authorization and compensation.
According to tech media reports, the latest data from Layoffs.fyi, a company tracking tech industry layoffs, predicts that total layoffs this year will exceed 240,000. Market analysts attribute this primarily to the unfavorable economic environment, prompting companies to cut costs and implement large-scale layoffs. Additionally, technological advancements driven by AI have contributed to a certain degree of frictional unemployment. Typically, frictional unemployment refers to joblessness caused by technological factors—where economic adjustments or resource allocation imbalances require some workers to transition between jobs, leading to temporary unemployment during the shift.
Coincidentally, in Europe, BT, the UK's largest telecom operator, has announced plans to cut up to 55,000 jobs by 2030, representing about 42% of its workforce, to significantly reduce costs. Foreign media reports indicate that 10,000 of these job cuts will come from customer service departments, which will be replaced by digital and automated technologies.
The Bank of Korea stated that AI could replace up to 4 million jobs in South Korea over the next 20 years. A research report released by the central bank on Thursday warned that AI may displace as much as 14% of the country's total workforce, further signaling impending disruptions in global labor markets.
A research team at the Bank of Korea noted: "Since AI can more easily handle analytical and cognitive tasks, higher-educated and higher-income workers face greater threats." They identified pharmacists, doctors, lawyers, accountants, and asset managers as the most vulnerable professions, while religious services, food service, teaching, and singing-related jobs were deemed least susceptible.
South Korea already has one of the world's highest robot adoption rates to mitigate the effects of an aging population. Despite this, the country remains among those with relatively low AI utilization.
Recently, Maimai's High-Tech Talent Think Tank released the "2023 Pan-AI Talent Insight" report (hereafter referred to as the "Insight"), showing that from January to August 2023, the average monthly salary for new AI-related positions exceeded ¥46,000, with a talent supply-demand ratio of just 0.39—meaning five job openings compete for two candidates.
In February 2023, ChatGPT's popularity sparked widespread discussion and searches among professionals on Maimai. The search index for AI-related terms reached 459.31, a year-on-year increase of over 5.4 times, while the content publication index hit 57.91, nearly nine times higher than the previous year.
Talent Market Industry Analysis: AI Talent Shortage
Given AI's broad applications across industries and scenarios, the "Insight" used AI-related job tags as the basis for data analysis. "AI talent" was defined as positions or resumes containing keywords like AI, algorithms, data, deep learning, and natural language processing. For "AIGC (AI-generated content) talent," the criteria included keywords like AIGC, part-of-speech tagging, sentiment analysis, grammatical rules, and semantic analysis.
In 2023, ChatGPT's rise triggered an AI entrepreneurship boom. Starting in March, AIGC job postings surged dramatically, especially driven by the large-model startup wave. Major tech firms and unicorn companies entered the market, competing for talent and causing AIGC job postings to nearly triple in April. By the second half of the year, new AIGC job postings stabilized.
From January to August 2023, the average salary for newly posted AIGC positions showed an upward trend. By March 2023, the average monthly salary for new AIGC positions had exceeded ¥50,000, reaching ¥52,472 - an 11.6% increase from January's ¥47,015. Starting from June, the average monthly salary for new AIGC positions stabilized around ¥60,000.
Due to the shortage of AI talent, the talent scarcity intensified. Data from Insights shows that in 2022, the supply-demand ratio for AI talent was 0.63. From January to August 2023, this ratio dropped to 0.39, meaning 5 job openings compete for 2 candidates. Among the top 10 most in-demand positions, autonomous driving system engineers ranked first with a supply-demand ratio of 0.38. The popularity of large language models in 2023 significantly increased demand for ChatGPT researchers, pushing this role into the top 10 most scarce positions.
The number of new AI job postings from January to August 2023 has already reached the total volume for all of 2022.
Looking at specific roles, as the core of AI, algorithms largely determine the level of intelligence, and algorithm engineers define the ceiling for AI companies' development. Among in-demand AI positions, algorithm roles remain highly sought-after. Algorithm engineers accounted for 46.45% of new postings, natural language processing positions made up 11.04% (ranking second), and algorithm researchers (5.36%) ranked fifth.
Affected by supply-demand dynamics, the average salary for new AI positions has significantly increased in recent years. In 2022, the average salary for new AI positions was ¥43,817, which rose to ¥46,518 in the first eight months of 2023 - a 6.16% increase.
The top three highest-paying new positions from January to August 2023 were ChatGPT researchers, algorithm researchers, and AI engineers. ChatGPT researchers ranked first with an average monthly salary of ¥66,244. All top 10 highest-paying positions offered average monthly salaries exceeding ¥50,000. These roles - including deep learning, machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision - are all technically demanding specialties.
In 2023, China had 11.58 million college graduates. Despite ongoing employment pressures during graduation season, multiple provincial governments including Heilongjiang, Hebei, Anhui, Tianjin, and Chongqing have implemented various measures like corporate visits, job fairs, career counseling sessions, and expert-led guidance to assist graduates with employment.