How Does AI Disrupt Industries?

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) is on the rise, with new large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Google’s Bard, becoming more widely accessible both for personal and professional use. According to Statista, while the economy’s shift towards artificial intelligence is projected to create 69 million new jobs, a loss of 85 million jobs is expected to occur, especially in sectors capable of being automated [1]. If you’re curious about what positions AI might replace, some of the ones susceptible to automation are customer service, truck driver, computer programmer, and graphic designer.

Read further to discover how artificial intelligence affects industries and which industries it may disrupt in the future. You can also uncover the benefits of AI developments and the potential concerns associated with developing more advanced AI technology.

How does AI disrupt industries?

Due to the increasing developments in artificial intelligence, more and more industries will become affected and disrupted by it. An example is an AI tool that can both create stories and write code. This tool might disrupt the copywriting and news report industries. AI disruption has both positive and negative effects on jobs and industries, as it may increase productivity while also lowering the demand for workers and thus decreasing the number of job positions available.

Industries that AI might disrupt

Below is a list of industries that could become affected by artificial intelligence, as well as the jobs that could be most impacted by the growth of large language models:

*All annual base salary details are sourced from Glassdoor as of March 2024. They reflect the average and do not include additional pay, such as commission and benefits.

Health care

Artificial intelligence automation could replace the need for certain jobs in the health care industry, such as medical billers, who submit claims to insurance companies, and transcriptionists responsible for turning clinical notes into medical reports. As machine learning capabilities increase, if a computer can do a particular job as well as a human, the need for an actual employee might no longer exist for that role.

However, even though AI is continuing to grow and develop, humans, such as doctors, may still be needed in the health care sector to provide patients with a high level of care and treatment. AI isn’t always completely accurate or factual, so it’s important to still employ doctors to fact-check, incorporate creativity and critical thinking into their work, and provide empathy and explanations to patients. Most likely, if you’re a physician, you will utilize artificial intelligence to support your work.

• Medical biller: $47,602, average annual salary

• Medical transcriptionist: $62,676, average annual salary

• Radiologist: $303,136, average annual salary

Retail

With automation services like self-checkout, the retail industry's need for cashiers and shopkeepers has lessened. When purchasing a product at a store, you’ve probably noticed you no longer need to rely on human beings to help you find what you’re looking for due to websites and phone applications telling you the exact information you need to shop.

Ultimately, the need for fewer human cashiers and more self-checkout machines could benefit businesses looking to reduce the costs of hiring more individuals. However, shoppers who prefer human interaction may turn away from stores with machines as cashiers. Theft could also increase at these businesses where no one looks out for stolen items at checkout.

• Cashier: $34,840, average annual salary

• Shopkeeper: $52,613, average annual salary

• Sales representative: $89,872, average annual salary

Entertainment

Creative individuals typically make up the entertainment industry and bring unique, innovative talents to their jobs. With the rise of AI, some of these artistic, creative jobs could be replaced altogether. 

One artificial intelligence tool, DALL-E, creates images based on your prompts. In the entertainment industry, the need for artists, animators, and even makeup artists could decrease if more companies choose to use artificial intelligence to develop these images instead of human workers. For example, the production company could use an AI tool rather than using a makeup artist to make an actor appear older.

• Animator: $60,048, average annual salary

• Voice actor: $72,646, average annual salary

• Visual effects artist: $91,756, average annual salary

Marketing

Artificial intelligence affects marketing roles by automating the collection of your data for website and social media analytics. While this may take away from data analysis roles, it also increases productivity for employees in marketing roles, who may now spend less time with analytics and more time implementing new strategies based on the data.

AI also affects creativity, primarily due to the development of large language models. Marketing jobs may become disrupted when companies use resources like ChatGPT to generate an idea or campaign instead of hiring a qualified candidate to do the same job.

• Public relations specialist: $61,006, average annual salary

• Market research analyst: $72,370, average annual salary

• Marketing manager: $82,733, average annual salary

Banking

Due to artificial intelligence, data entry, bank telling, and data analysis jobs may become fully automated, which could result in the loss of many banking roles. When ATMs were first introduced, people suspected that the number of bank tellers would decrease. However, the number of tellers actually increased because banks were able to open more branches. You’ve probably already interacted with a problem-solving chatbot at some point. They could disrupt the roles of banking customer service agents and financial analysts. 

Other concerns in the banking and financial sector include the potential for inherent bias unintentionally built into the AI technology, the fact that these AI models are incapable of explaining the reasons for their actions, and whether they are secure enough to handle so much financial data.

• Bank teller: $40,208, average annual salary

• Auditor: $70,961, average annual salary

• Financial analyst: $85,299, average annual salary

Customer service

The disruption of customer service jobs has increased as chatbots have become increasingly popular for businesses and company websites. When a company chooses to use an AI chatbot to assist customers, the need for an actual human customer service agent decreases, reducing the size of the agent’s role.

Despite the rise of chatbots in daily life, a company still needs customer service roles for when AI can’t meet customers' needs. Often, customers prefer to speak with a human even after interacting with a chatbot. 

• Customer service representative: $39,748, average annual salary

• Customer service manager: $48,718, average annual salary

• Technical support engineer: $76,851, average annual salary

Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity roles typically help prevent cyberattacks and protect your business against the corruption of data, fraud in the form of extortion, and the disruption of your company’s standard operations. However, developments in artificial intelligence may now counteract the work that cybersecurity specialists have done. Hackers use artificial intelligence to get around cybersecurity protection by having large language models write more convincing scam-baiting emails or by creating compromised code.

Cybersecurity jobs could also be at risk of becoming automated in the future due to AI. However, with the increased use of artificial intelligence comes the need for AI oversight, which could open up jobs for cybersecurity professionals as your role expands to preventing AI cybercrime and overseeing AI’s automation technology.

• Information security manager: $149,797, average annual salary

• Cybersecurity analyst: $103,873, average annual salary

• Cybersecurity engineer: $118,506, average annual salary

Developments in AI

As artificial intelligence continues to develop, it has become increasingly adaptable to situations, prompts, and decision-making. Additionally, AI tools are learning to mimic human speech to appear more empathic and human-like and better connect with you when you are interacting with them. This development allows you to have better experiences with AI chatbots, which helps the AI models get smarter and more accurate through each interaction. Additional areas of progress with AI in recent years include natural language processing, speech recognition and generation, the ability to both recognize and produce images, and decision-making.

Let’s take a look at the benefits and concerns of these developments in artificial intelligence:

Benefits of developments in AI

The use of AI in the workplace has been shown to increase productivity among workers. Many administrative, time-consuming tasks, such as proofreading and double-checking invoices, have become automated, freeing up workers' time for other duties. The use of chatbots could also transform the customer experience, as you will have less time waiting in either in-person or virtual lines because the AI can resolve your issues efficiently and quickly.

While some concerns are that AI could replace many jobs, it actually creates quite a few roles just by existing. These roles include jobs training machine learning models and other AI tools to further the development of artificial intelligence.

Concerns about developments in AI

Ethical concerns surrounding artificial intelligence have been a topic of conversation since the inception of this technology. Some of these ethical concerns include breaching private information, specifically your medical data or personal finances. AI can also show biases and discrimination based on the data it's fed, which could harm those it discriminates against.

Additionally, AI has a history of providing inaccurate or disinformation at times, which could harm political processes worldwide. In the business world, AI-generated content has the power to negatively impact the stock market, which occurred when Russia posted a fake photo depicting an explosion near the Pentagon. Even with developments in AI, inaccuracies will still occur, and necessary oversight will help prevent the spread of misinformation. 

Getting started with Coursera

Artificial intelligence is being incorporated into society and the economy more and more every day, but with effective regulations, proper oversight, and a personal understanding of how this technology works, AI can make incredible contributions to daily life.

If you want to discover more about artificial intelligence and how to use it to your advantage, consider taking courses and Specializations on Coursera that may enhance your knowledge. Explore Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (AI), offered by IBM, or AI for Business Specialization, offered by the University of Pennsylvania, both available on Coursera.