New Delhi: In the next 8-10 years, generative Artificial Intelligence will have a considerable impact on offices and the way people work. Its impact will be mostly felt in the sectors where there is a greater scope for automation of tasks using artificial intelligence and the impact of AI on offices and jobs will also be affected by how fast companies and organisations adopt AI for automating their tasks.
Last year, Oxford Economics, a London-based economic think tank, started analysing the impact of generative artificial intelligence on the commercial real estate sector. Generative AI tools include services such as Chat GPT, Claude AI, Copilot by Microsoft and Gemini by Google, among others.
The idea was to find out the impact of such services on the economy over the next 8-10 years and how the displacement of workers will impact the commercial real estate sector as displacement of workers from offices due to AI-caused automation will also reduce the need for office space due to less number of people required to produce the same level of output.
The think tank employed machine learning to assign automatability scores to almost 18,000 tasks in the USA. Then it also studied the importance attached to those jobs and their exposure to generative artificial intelligence. It then incorporated business adoption rate assumptions to estimate the realized impact of generative AI on different sectors of the economy.
It allowed the researchers at the think tank to assess the potential impact on commercial real estate by assigning a property sector to each occupation. Although the original study was focused on the USA, the exercise is instructive for the corporate real estate sector globally, particularly in developed markets.
In order to assess the trajectory of future adoption rates, the researchers estimated the experience of the rollout of enterprise software in the USA. It showed that the jobs that are theoretically the most exposed to generative AI include computer and mathematical roles, office and administrative support, and sales jobs. As against it, the jobs and occupations related to agriculture, construction, and cleaning and maintenance were least exposed.
Mark Unsworth, Associate Director at Oxford Economics, said Generative AI will influence the economy through its ability to assist or automate workplace tasks. “In 2023, the majority of workplace tasks were unable to be assisted or automated by generative AI. But by 2032, generative AI is predicted to be capable of not only influencing a greater share of tasks but automating them to a greater degree,” Mark Unsworth said in a statement sent to ETV Bharat.
The study showed how the share of tasks by their degree of automation will change over the next 9-10 years. For example, the share of tasks that were not affected by AI-led automation will decline from 57 per cent in 2023 to 43 per cent in 2032. Similarly, the share of fully automatable tasks will increase from 1 per cent in 2023 to 12 per cent in 2032.
Computer, mathematics-related jobs to have maximum exposure to AI
Computer and mathematics-related jobs and occupations will have the highest degree of exposure to generative AI with 62 per cent exposure. It is followed by office and administrative support with 53 per cent exposure and sales and other related activities at 52 per cent.
The study showed that jobs related to arts, design, entertainment and sports will have 52 per cent exposure by 2032. These occupations are followed by business and financial operations (49 per cent), management (45 per cent), architecture and engineering (42 per cent), life, physical and social sciences (33 per cent), legal jobs and occupations (33 per cent), healthcare professionals and technical occupations (27 per cent), community and social services (27 per cent), protective services (25 per cent).
The research also showed that sectors such as food preparation, service-related jobs and production-related occupations will have 20 per cent exposure while healthcare support will have 18 per cent exposure. On the other hand, sectors such as transportation and material movement will have 17 per cent exposure and occupations related to installation, maintenance and repair will have just 14 per cent exposure.
Three sectors such as farming fishing and forestry will have just 12 per cent exposure which will be equal to the construction and extraction sectors as will while jobs related to building and ground cleaning will have the least exposure at 5 per cent in the next 8-10 years. Mark Unsworth says the use of generative AI to assist and automate workplace tasks is predicted to raise the productivity of the overall US workforce by over 10 per cent over the next decade.
“This means some workers will be displaced,” noted the economist. It means by 2032, over 9 per cent of the current US workforce is estimated to be displaced by generative AI, representing 9.3 per cent fewer work hours required in 2032 to produce the same level of output.
Workers in the information sector are proportionately the most at risk of getting displaced by generative AI. However, in absolute terms, more workers are predicted to be displaced from the professional, scientific, and technical services sector than any other, showed the study.
How commercial real estate will be affected by AI?
These sectors are typically office-using, which will add a major headwind to future space demand in the office property sector, unless office-using employment growth can increase sufficiently to provide an offset. The study showed that offices will be the most affected sector with nearly 19 per cent impact. It will be followed by Life Sciences with 11.4 per cent impact and Manufacturing with 8 per cent impact.
These three sectors will be followed by retail (7 per cent), healthcare (6.9 per cent), leisure (6.5 per cent), other sectors (5.9 per cent), education (5.5 per cent), logistics (4.3 per cent), the industrial sector (3.2 per cent) while hospitality sector will be least impacted with less than 2 per cent impact.
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