AI to Impact Skills Upgrade for 220 Million Chinese Workers, with Customer Service, IT, and Creative Professions Most Affected

[baoshi.rao]

AIGC (Generative Artificial Intelligence) as a new universal content production tool is demonstrating immense potential across industries.

AI is projected to bring $25.6 trillion in positive impact to the global economy. Meanwhile, by 2030, approximately 220 million Chinese workers—about 30% of China's total workforce—will require skills upgrading or retraining to adapt to industry transformations driven by AI.

Generative AI (GenAI) can create tremendous value for global industries through three primary ways: enhancing production efficiency, driving innovation capabilities, and reshaping competitive landscapes. McKinsey predicts that AI overall will contribute up to $25.6 trillion in positive economic impact globally, with generative AI alone accounting for $7.9 trillion (based on 2022 global economic structure estimates), equivalent to 8% of current global GDP.

In the retail and consumer goods sector, GenAI will be a game-changer, creating $400 billion to $660 billion in value, representing 1.2% to 2.0% of total industry revenue. In banking, GenAI will generate $200 billion to $340 billion in value, equivalent to 2.8% to 4.7% of annual industry revenue.

GenAI will also significantly reshape the future job market. By 2030, an estimated 220 million Chinese workers—approximately 30% of China's total workforce—will need skills upgrading or retraining. Professions most affected include customer service, back-office support, IT, and creative/art management.

Throughout the long journey of AI development, teaching machines to create has been considered an insurmountable challenge, with "creativity" regarded as one of the fundamental distinctions between humans and machines. However, human creativity will ultimately endow machines with creative capabilities, ushering the world into a new era of intelligent creation. From machine learning to intelligent creation, from PGC and UGC to AIGC, we are about to witness a profound productivity revolution that will impact every aspect of our work and lives.

Generative AI (AIGC) marks a critical milestone in the transition from AI 1.0 to AI 2.0. This year, AIGC has already sparked an investment boom. The global AIGC market was valued at $10.79 billion in 2022 and is projected to reach approximately $73.16 billion by 2030.

As the AIGC industry accelerates, commercialization deepens, and industrial ecosystems mature, the sector will enter phases of vigorous application growth (2025-2027) and overall acceleration (2028-2030). By 2030, the market size will exceed one trillion yuan, giving rise to entirely new business models.

In this new wave of AI, foundational large models like ChatGPT and similar applications have taken center stage. Industry experts widely assert that the AI sector has entered a new phase of development.

Analysis of the Development Prospects of the AIGC Industry

Amid the robust demand for digital content, attention is directed toward the expansion of related scenario applications. AIGC + Content Production: With the rapid development of artificial intelligence deep learning, the new generation of models can process any content format, including text, speech, code, images, videos, and 3D models. For the gaming industry, AIGC facilitates the creation of broader interactive narrative genres, introducing new social gameplay and business models. For the film and television industry, AIGC can inspire creative ideas for scripts, expand the creative space for characters and scenes, and enhance the post-production quality of film and television products.

On the industrial front, AIGC is accelerating its application in fields such as finance, healthcare, and retail. For example, Google uses AI-generated medical records to help predict insurance fraud. With the advancement of "new infrastructure" and the implementation of related deployments by the State Grid Corporation, artificial intelligence will have greater development potential in the power sector.

From the perspective of industry segmentation, the application layer offers the most entrepreneurial opportunities, while the model layer, influenced by ChatGPT, saw a surge in startups in 2023. In terms of investment rounds, about 70% of projects are still in the Series A or earlier stages, with as much as 14.6% involving equity or strategic financing. This indicates that although the sector is in its infancy, its strategic value is widely recognized.

In the first half of 2023, the global AIGC industry raised a total of 106.656 billion yuan across 78 financing rounds. Domestically, the AIGC industry raised 6.239 billion yuan across 56 financing rounds. The company with the highest funding in China during this period was Minimax, securing $250 million. The average single-round financing size in China was 118 million yuan.

The domestic investment market now recognizes AI as a major development trend. Another notable statistic from the report highlights the rapid growth of China's AIGC sector: from October 2022 to June 2023, domestic AIGC companies raised 6.69 billion yuan, accounting for 116.28% of the total financing from 2020 to 2022.

Among the 170 funded companies, about 17% received funding three or more times. The high-frequency financing of the same targets reflects the substantial capital required for early-stage AIGC startups from the demand side, while the supply side indicates that high-quality entrepreneurial projects remain scarce.

Regarding entrepreneurial paths in AIGC, they can be divided into three functional dimensions:

1. Helping enterprises reduce operational costs, such as the recently launched Microsoft 365 Copilot.
2. Improving customer satisfaction and product experience, such as using voice interaction technology to provide personalized products for consumers, which is particularly evident in digital human technology.
3. As a revolutionary technology, general artificial intelligence also bears significant social responsibilities, such as providing more convenient life services for people with disabilities.

With the gradual improvement of AI hardware infrastructure, large-scale use of AIGC is becoming possible, empowering various terminal applications and driving AI applications into a new rapid development phase.