AI, including generative AI, will have an impact on all jobs, says Saurabh Sanghvi, partner with McKinsey & Company.

He explains, “In our midpoint scenario, what we found is that about 30% of activities across all occupations can be impacted by AI including generative AI.”

Sanghvi joined WorkingNation’s editor-in-chief Ramona Schindelheim for WorkingNation Overheard at SXSW EDU 2024 in Austin.

Sanghvi notes that those impacts will not replace entire job roles and offers an example. “We did a recent survey where we found most teachers actually work 50 to 60 hours, which is beyond and above what they’re expected to do. And so the idea is – how can you actually help a teacher save 30% of their time and redirect that to actually some of the things that they uniquely can do that we think that generative AI or other technologies are still far from doing?”

He points out, “If we can do that, you could have teachers that are far less overworked and you can see an improvement in student outcomes.”

Different job roles are likely more affected by AI technology, explains Sanghvi. “When we studied all the different occupations, there are a category of roles particularly around customer service production, some amount of sales, some amount of food service jobs where we see that these jobs, actually even prior to generative AI, had been automated. About 50% of the job transitions that we saw in the last three years came in those categories.

“We expect that now looking forward about 80% of some of the transitions are going to happen there,” he says – affecting more heavily lower-wage workers and women.

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