People Management - AI and how it impacts wages and jobs

AI is forecast to cost 10 Million jobs in the UK alone over the next 10 years, with women in line to be the most affected, according to the UK Governments own research.

Our group believes this number is lowball. Anything that is process-based CAN and WILL be automated.

Companies are already making roles that are output based, meaning it can be delivered by digital workers (ie. a computer or a robot) with little work being done by said companies to create Outcomes for the human workers, within their current, or future job designs.

This is why (at last measure) 26% of digital transformations fail and those companies who have been quick to make redundancies and upskill changes, often end up clamoring to re-employ exited colleagues or rack up huge debts by engaging temp support.

Those companies who are engaging in a human resource architecture alongside its digital resource architecture are succeeding, in large part due to moving their people to outcomes and an FRA.

AI will cause a massive drop in wages, but also in prices.

AI is expected to reduce the cost of human labour through automation and improved efficiency. This should result in an associated drop in prices; if the cost of making widgets goes down, the price of widgets goes down.

Some of the largest expenses that organisations incur are wages, and these savings are likely to be passed onto the customer. The increased efficiency of AI-based labour should, in theory, result in further cost-savings, and thus price reductions. Eventually, if humans are priced out of the labour force, this could herald the beginning of a post-scarcity economy, where goods approach marginal cost for everyone.

So although wages may fall, so should prices. It's not all bad news for the workforce.