Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: After a long period of relative geo-economic stability, geopolitics, frontier technologies, rising government interventionism, economic volatility and talent shortages are all contributing to businesses facing a more turbulent environment and greater uncertainty for their business strategies. Long-established job and skills profiles are being shaken up by frontier technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and automation, as businesses adopt them to improve productivity and competitiveness.
The World Economic Forum’s Four Futures for the New Economy: Geo-economics and Technology in 2030 looks at potential scenarios for how these trends may shape the future of the global economy. These scenarios begin with a positive outlook on moving to a “digitalised order”, where stabilised geopolitics and rapid tech adoption boost global growth, despite some labour disruptions.
The “cautious stability” scenario lowers risk premiums and shocks but shows stagnant growth as frontier tech like AI is only gradually adopted, with minimal impact on jobs and wages.
“Tech-based survival” depicts a world with abundant opportunities but ongoing geopolitical instability. The fourth scenario introduces “geotech spheres”, where countries mainly trade with allies, tech impacts diminish, and while reshoring jobs reduces polarisation, talent shortages grow. With the business community still divided on the impact and direction of AI, the Forum’s Four Futures for Jobs in the New Economy: AI and Talent in 2030 report paints four possible scenarios for the future of jobs.
“Supercharged progress” sees AI boosting productivity and innovation, with workers shifting to new roles quickly, but social safety nets, ethics and governance lag. In the “age of displacement” scenario, rapid tech advances outpace workers’ reskilling, causing talent shortages, increased automation, unemployment and social division.
The “co-pilot economy” features incremental AI growth, enhancing human expertise for a gradual business transformation.
Finally, “stalled progress” involves a mix of lagging workforce readiness and tech adoption, leading to uneven productivity gains and economic stagnation. The four AI impact scenarios emphasise a key point: The promise of AI can only be realised if people have the right skills. AI is transforming digital skillsets, while wages for AI roles have increased by 27 per cent since 2019, the World Economic Forum’s New Economy Skills: Building AI, Data and Digital Capabilities for Growth highlights. Yet businesses are struggling to recruit as workers are not acquiring AI skills at the required pace. At the same time, another white paper, New Economy Skills: Unlocking the Human Advantage, points to the growing importance of human-centric skills such as creativity, innovation and adaptability.
These are both the hardest to automate and valued by employers, but they are often invisible in the job market compared to AI technical skills. The issue stems from a lack of measurement and standards, which need to be addressed.
