{"id":386251,"date":"2026-01-23T15:02:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T15:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/386251\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T15:02:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T15:02:07","slug":"young-will-suffer-most-when-ai-tsunami-hits-jobs-says-head-of-imf-ai-artificial-intelligence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/386251\/","title":{"rendered":"Young will suffer most when AI \u2018tsunami\u2019 hits jobs, says head of IMF | AI (artificial intelligence)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Artificial intelligence will be a \u201ctsunami hitting the labour market\u201d, with young people worst affected, the head of the International Monetary Fund warned the World Economic Forum on Friday.<\/p>\n

Kristalina Georgieva told delegates in Davos that the IMF\u2019s own research suggested there would be a big transformation of demand for skills, as the technology becomes increasingly widespread.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe expect over the next years, in advanced economies, 60% of jobs to be affected by AI, either enhanced or eliminated or transformed \u2013 40% globally,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is like a tsunami hitting the labour market.\u201d<\/p>\n

She suggested that in advanced economies, one in 10 jobs had already been \u201cenhanced\u201d by AI, tending to boost these workers\u2019 pay, with knock-on benefits for the local economy.<\/p>\n

Kristalina Georgieva speaking in Davos. Photograph: Denis Balibouse\/Reuters<\/p>\n

By contrast, Georgieva warned that AI would wipe out many roles traditionally taken up by younger workers. \u201cTasks that are eliminated are usually what entry-level jobs do at present, so young people searching for jobs find it harder to get to a good placement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile people whose jobs were not directly changed by artificial intelligence risked being squeezed, she said, with their pay potentially falling without a productivity boost from AI.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo the middle class, inevitably, is going to be affected,\u201d Georgieva predicted.<\/p>\n

She said her greatest fear was that AI was insufficiently regulated. \u201cThis is moving so fast, and yet we don\u2019t know how to make it safe. We don\u2019t know how to make it inclusive. Wake up, AI is for real, and it is transforming our world faster than we are getting ahead of it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Much of the debate at the annual meeting of the business and political elite in the Swiss ski resort this week has been hijacked by Donald Trump\u2019s on-off tariff threats<\/a> over the future of Greenland.<\/p>\n

But many delegates were also keen to highlight the risks and benefits of AI. Christy Hoffman, general secretary of the UNI global union, told the Guardian: \u201cIt\u2019s just a basic premise that the point of AI, on the business side, is to increase productivity, therefore lower costs \u2013 which will be cutting jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s time to come to terms with that disruption \u2013 and how to manage that disruption,\u201d she said, calling for the productivity benefits to be distributed fairly across the economy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to share in the gains. We\u2019re not going to stop AI, nor do we want to even try \u2013 but we don\u2019t want it to just roll over us.\u201d She called on employers to discuss the role of AI tools with workers and their representatives before introducing them.<\/p>\n

Earlier in the week at Davos, the Microsoft chief executive, Satya Nadella, warned that AI could lose its \u201csocial permission\u201d to compete for resources such as energy, for example, if it failed to generate benefits beyond a few powerful tech firms \u2013 such as the rapid development of effective new drugs.<\/p>\n

Georgieva was speaking on a panel alongside the president of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, who warned that the AI boom could be hampered by growing mistrust between rival economies, as the US throws up tariff barriers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are dependent on each other,\u201d she said, pointing out that AI was capital intensive, energy intensive and data intensive. If countries did not work cooperatively and \u201cdefine the new rules of the game,\u201d she said, there would be less capital and less data. \u201cWe are in a bind, lets face it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Lagarde also sounded the alarm about widening global inequality, highlighting the \u201cdisparity that is getting deeper and bigger\u201d.<\/p>\n

Earlier in the week at Davos, the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, urged delegates to face up to a permanent \u201crupture\u201d in the global economic order, and band together in the face of erratic US trade policy.<\/p>\n

But Lagarde said she was less gloomy. \u201cI\u2019m not exactly on the same page as Mark,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m not sure that we should be talking about rupture. I think we should be talking about alternatives.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Artificial intelligence will be a \u201ctsunami hitting the labour market\u201d, with young people worst affected, the head of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386252,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-386251","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}