On August 18, Xinhua news agency quoted a new report from the Bank of Korea (BOK) as saying that the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) is posing risks to the jobs of Korean youth.
The report, based on data on participants in the national pension insurance system and a survey of the labor force, shows that jobs for young people continue to decline sharply.
In the past 4 years, South Korea has lost 285,000 jobs for young people. Notably, there are 268,000 jobs, equivalent to 94% of the total job losses, concentrated in industries with high exposure to AI.
The information service sector recorded a decrease of 31.4% in jobs for young people in 4 years. In the fields of publishing, computer programming and professional services, jobs for young workers decreased by 27.4%, 16.6% and 11.6% respectively.
Notably, this trend is not similar in the older worker group. Employment of workers in their 50s continues to increase in industries where the number of young people's jobs has decreased sharply.
According to BOK, the level of impact of AI on employment is not the same between industries, but depends significantly on how businesses apply this technology.
In industries that use AI to automate and replace tasks previously performed by humans, the recruitment of young workers has decreased sharply.
Meanwhile, in places where AI is mainly used as a tool to support workers, the negative impact on recruiting young people is limited.
According to BOK, the issue is not whether businesses use AI or not, but whether AI is used to replace workers or support them to work more efficiently.
