Kamal Ghorui
At a time when tech CEOs are warning of a looming “AI apocalypse” threatening to wipe out scores of jobs, Bank of America (BofA) is urging everyone to take a deep breath. In a comprehensive report, the bank’s global research team argues that while artificial intelligence (AI) will undoubtedly disrupt the labor market, history and economic theory suggest the industry are not headed for a ‘job Armageddon’.In the report published on April 28 (via Fortune), the bank’s economists used 85 years of labor market data to provide a ‘reality check’, saying that the American economy has a long history of inventing its way out of technological disruption.
The ‘60% Rule’ of innovation
The central argument of BofA’s is how much the workforce has already changed. About 60% of the jobs held by Americans today did not exist in 1940, they said. Common modern roles like social media managers, data scientists and cloud developers were virtually unheard of just 20 years ago. The bank also points to the massive shift in agriculture as a prime example: in the early 1900s, 40% of Americans worked in farming; today, that number is just 1% – yet the economy found new ways to employ the other 39%.The bank, however, is not ignoring the scale of the change. Roughly 840 million jobs worldwide (about one in four) are exposed to generative AI. High-income economies face the highest risk, with 33% of jobs in the ‘exposure’ zone, the report said. However, BofA makes a critical distinction between a job being affected by AI and a job being deleted by it. The bank says that in 13% of global jobs, AI will act as a partner, enhancing what workers can do rather than replacing them – like professional and financial services. Moreover, 2.3% of global jobs have potential to be fully taken over by AI. Repetitive roles in customer service and administration face the highest risk here.
The rise of ‘Agentic AI ’
Despite the optimism, the report does flag a new concern: Agentic AI. Unlike standard tools that assist with a single task, agentic AI can autonomously manage entire workflows. BofA acknowledges this as a “more structurally disruptive force” because it shifts AI from a helpful assistant to an “AI as worker itself”.Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan has echoed these findings, noting that in 1969, experts predicted computers would eliminate all management roles, yet BofA currently employs 20,000 managers.
