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AI can replace mental labour used for routine middle-skilled structured tasks capable of definition . Therefore , mid-career , middle management employees are most likely to be a significantly smaller cohort within the future workforce . In 2014 Oxford University researchers ranked insurance underwriters as the fifth highest occupation at risk of replacement by computers and robots .
AI focuses on tasks and the expectation is that while some job categories will be redundant , increasingly roles will adapt to work alongside Cobots , robotics that will become increasingly capable . This is already happening within Insurance .
New roles will be also created . Forrester Research indicate that 15 million new jobs will be created in the US over the next decade as a direct result of automation and that equates to 10 % of the workforce .
Notwithstanding such sectoral shifts in employment can have painful consequences for some who do not or are not capable of upskilling to find roles at comparable salary levels . Wage reduction and average wage stagnation over an extended period may occur should the pace of change and reduction in available work outstrip ability to secure alternate employment .
When considering consequences , we should not overlook the pressure on Insurance business models to adapt to reflect the bespoke , intuitive and streamlined customer experience that customers now expect and receive from the technology giants like Amazon and eBay . Of course , any technological advancement of this scale will also give rise to new and additional insurable risks .
ETHICAL DILEMMAS The ethical question is how to build and deploy AI in the responsible and transparent
Issue 5 • March 2018 • The Insider