The IMF likens AI's effect on jobs to a slow-moving tsunami

The IMF's managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, likened AI's effect on the labour market to a slow-moving tsunami on a panel in Bangkok on 12 October, according to CNBC. In her view, young graduates are hit first, because the routine jobs people start out in are disappearing.

Georgieva cited an IMF estimate: over time, about 40% of jobs worldwide will be augmented, downgraded or eliminated by AI. On the same panel, Singapore's president, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, called for crisis-era hiring support to be made permanent. He said that in the US, demand for graduates has fallen for the first time in a century. The World Bank's president, Ajay Banga, was less pessimistic: he sees a big opportunity to create jobs with small AI in middle-income countries.