The UN has weighed in on the impact AI will have on the workforce, saying clerical jobs are the ones most at risk.

Artificial intelligence is a boon to some industries, but many fear that the rise of AI will lead to massive job losses as AIs replace human employees. According to a study by the International Labour Organization, clerical jobs are most in danger of being replaced by generative AI:

The occupational group with the highest share of tasks exposed to GPT technology are the clerical jobs, where the majority of tasks fall at least into medium-level exposure, and about a quarter of tasks are highly exposed to potential automation. As a result of technological progress, many such jobs might never emerge in developing countries, where they traditionally served as a vehicle for increasing female employment. For other types of “knowledge work”, exposure is only partial, suggesting a stronger augmentation potential and productivity benefits, rather than job displacement.

Interestingly, one negative side effect of the AI transition that has escaped notice by many, is that women are poised to be disproportionately impacted. This stems from women having more roles in the industries and jobs that will see the biggest impact from AI.

The global estimates also confirm the strong gender effect observed in the microdata. When we disaggregate the estimate to shares of female and male employment, we observe that 3.7 percent of all female employment in the world is in jobs that are potentially automatable with generative AI technology, compared with only 1.4 percent of male employment. In high-income countries, the share of potentially affected female jobs is 7.8 percent, more than double the 2.9 percent of male jobs for that income group. At the same time, the share of jobs with high augmentation potential is also greater among female than male jobs across all income groups. This suggests that any form of technological transition would have a strongly gendered effect, with a badly managed process disproportionately harming women, and a well-managed transition potentially creating important opportunities in terms of women’s empowerment.

The full report is well worth a read and sheds light on the upcoming changes AI will bring to the workforce.