Impact of generative AI on skills in the workplace

With the recent proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) in the public domain, the Future Skills Organisation (FSO) has been examining the potential impact of AI on Australia's vocational education and training (VET) and training systems. Generative AI will affect the tasks that we perform in different ways: some automated, many augmented, and others adapted. Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence technology that can produce various types of content, including text, imagery, audio and synthetic data. To determine the impact on occupations and training products this research used estimates of impact on human abilities. The ability estimates were mapped to other variables of interest such as occupations and training products.

The occupations with the highest required skills level are more likely to change as generative AI systems are implemented. The primary impact on the training will therefore be at the university level. Within the VET system, higher level qualifications are more likely to face disruption. Across the three training packages administered by the FSO, there are qualifications with high AI exposure. The greatest exposure is faced in the Financial Services training package, in qualifications preparing people for roles in accounting and clerking for financial services firms, with ICT, in software development and programming roles, and Business Services, in administration and call centre roles, following. A hybrid AI-human classifier was used to assess the exposure of FSO units of competency (UOCs). There is significant variation of the AI exposure for UOCs within the FSO's training packages, with those in Financial Services and Business Services having the highest average exposure.

Edited excerpts from publication. Show less