AI technologies will take away 8 lakh jobs in Hong Kong by 2028

Hong Kong, June 16 (IANS) Artificial intelligence (AI)-based technologies will take away nearly 8 lakh jobs, or 25 per cent of the total workforce in Hong Kong by 2028, a study has forecast.

Data entry clerks, administration staff and customer service representatives will be most affected by AI, according to the report by IT recruitment firm Venturenix.

The report also highlighted the impact AI will have on diverse industries, like lawyers and translators.

“As AI applications penetrate into various industries, even traditional high-paying professions such as lawyers and translators are affected,” said the study, according to South China Morning Post.

“Illustrators and content creators are also more likely to be replaced,” it noted.

The huge popularity of ChatGPT has triggered fears of massive job eliminations.

Many Hong Kong companies are now asking employees in positions that previously did not require IT experience to learn to use ChatGPT, according to Venturenix.

According to global investment bank Goldman Sachs, nearly 300 million jobs could be lost to AI in the future globally.

A research report from Goldman Sachs predicted that AI could automate 25 per cent of the entire labour market but can automate 46 per cent of tasks in administrative jobs, 44 per cent of legal jobs, and 37 per cent of architecture and engineering professions.

Using large language models (LLM) like GPT-4, that powers ChatGPT, in data analysis costs less than 1 per cent of hiring a human analyst while turning in comparable performances, according to researchers from Damo Academy, the research arm of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, and Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.

The study highlighted the potential threat to job security amid increased adoption of generative AI.

The experiments showed that GPT-4 is also much faster than humans in completing the tasks.

In some cases, the AI model managed to surpass the human data analysts in terms of the correctness of the figures and analysis.