AI Forecast Positive: New Market Creation to Outweigh Job Losses

Artificial intelligence (AI) technology is expected to create 78 million more jobs globally by 2030, rather than eliminate them, by spurring new market creation and reducing costs. The World Economic Forum (WEF) forecasts that during this period, approximately 170 million new jobs will emerge while 92 million will be lost, resulting in a net increase of 78 million jobs. The International Labour Organization (ILO) also views generative AI as having a greater impact on transforming and reshaping existing roles rather than causing mass job displacement.

AI lowers production costs and speeds up delivery, converting services that were previously unviable due to price into market opportunities. It is also evaluated as a technology that significantly expands the value one person can create, generating new roles and business models. This underscores the growing importance not only of those who develop AI but also of those who apply it in the field to redesign industries.

Industries like manufacturing can be redesigned by AI through process control, predictive maintenance, quality inspection, and demand forecasting. In finance, AI can revolutionize underwriting, asset management, and risk analysis. The retail sector can see improvements in inventory management and recommendation systems, while logistics can benefit from route optimization and transport efficiency. In healthcare, AI can aid in record-keeping and diagnostic support, and in education, it can facilitate personalized tutoring and learning diagnostics. The new markets AI is opening can be broadly categorized into two areas.

The first is the 'hyper-personalization' market, which offers personalized services at scale and at a relatively low cost. In education, AI tutors tailored to individual levels and habits will become possible, and in healthcare, management support services based on lifestyle habits and health data will be available. In finance, AI will assist in asset management tailored to spending patterns and financial structures, while personalized, taste-based recommendations will become standard in shopping and content sectors. Services that were once exclusive to the wealthy are likely to expand to mass markets through AI.

The second is the 'hyper-localization of globalization' market. AI's assistance in translation, marketing, customer service, design, coding, documentation, and ad creation enables sole proprietorships and small teams to reach much larger markets than before. Unlike the past, when enormous capital and manpower were required for international expansion, small organizations can now possess global-level operational capabilities. The expansion of digital access and technological diffusion is simultaneously transforming the labor market and corporate structures, leading to the 'globalization of small organizations.' This goes beyond a mere increase in startups; it leads to increased market experimentation due to reduced costs of starting and failing businesses, accelerates the pace of business creation, exit, and restructuring, and contributes to overall economic productivity gains. AI functions as both an efficiency-enhancing technology and a catalyst for entrepreneurship.

Professions expected to grow rapidly include those in AI, big data, software, and security. In the AI era, not only model developers and data engineers but also roles like AI operations (MLOps), quality assurance, industry-specific AI project managers (PMs), business transformation designers, AI governance officers, copyright and legal experts, risk managers, and frontline training, sales, and content planning roles will see growth. This context underlies the WEF's identification of AI, big data, software, and security as fast-growing job sectors.

While the market's attention is focused on core AI industries such as semiconductors, large language models, data centers, and cloud computing, the ripple effects on value addition and employment are likely to be greater in the application and derivative industries built on top of AI. The market size and employment impact of upper-tier industries that redesign existing sectors using AI are expected to be significantly larger than those of the underlying industries that directly develop AI. Therefore, the core competition of the future will not be about who can build larger AI models, but rather who can faster apply AI to specific industries to lower costs and improve quality.