Financial advisors could be among jobs in crosshairs of AI

According to a recent report from the Brookings Institution, the people most in danger of losing their jobs to artificial intelligence are those with the most to offer—higher education—and the most to lose—higher pay.

The study takes a different tack from others that have tried to measure AI’s effects on the economy – including earlier studies from Brookings. It uses a process developed by Stanford University researcher and Ph.D. candidate Michael Webb, that analyzes, as Webb puts it, “the overlap between the text of job task descriptions and the text of patents to construct a measure of the exposure of tasks to automation.” (See “The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on the Labor market.”)

By analyzing different occupations’ levels of exposure to AI abilities that are soon to come, a prediction can be made about an occupation’s potential for being overtaken by AI.

The findings are undoubtedly worrisome for those in the higher echelons of the employment market: AI can take on tasks that require “planning, learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, or prediction.”

And right in the crosshairs: financial industry positions, potentially, among others.

Of course, AI applications are already at play in the financial industry, notes TechHQ. They include ones that help with such things as customer relationship management, automating tedious or time-consuming processes, assessing risk, and client-advisor matching.

TechHQ  cites a report by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF), that indicates the financial industry is ahead of other industries in its adoption of AI, calling the industry the poster child for an “arms race” to adopt AI.

The WEF/CCAF report found that what it calls “incumbent financial institutions” expect AI will replace 9% of their jobs, while fintech companies expect AI to expand their workforce by 19%.

There are other unsettling predictions about positions threatened by AI. For example, compliance officers might be at risk, according to Financier Worldwide’s March cover story, which looks at ways in which AI can/will be woven into financial compliance by financial institutions.

According to the Brookings study, nearly every occupational group, financial or otherwise, could be affected by AI.  While that doesn’t necessarily mean AI will result in the replacement of humans resulting in job loss, it does mean that the configuration of their work will likely change — perhaps beyond recognition compared to current parameters.

And since the report predicts that such change will hit those with higher educations/higher pay the hardest—although those with the most education, such as specialized degrees, and the highest positions, such as CEOs, are somewhat insulated—advisors will need to stay on their toes.

That’s in part because they’re fourth from the top of the vulnerable end of the spectrum.  Brookings ranks positions at risk to AI as market research analysts (with a higher score of vulnerability at 3.03), sales managers (2.77), computer programmers (1.96) and personal financial advisors (1.33) .

For comparison, those positions it assesses as less at risk include registered nurses (0.44), plumbers (0.22), human resources specialists (0.21) and mechanics (0.05).

And another insight Brookings finds: “AI looks most destined to affect men, prime-age workers, and white and Asian American workers,” since men “work in occupations with much higher AI exposure scores than women,” and prime-age workers—those between the ages of 25–54—“ are employed in occupations that are going to be disproportionally involved with AI.”

The “heavy involvement” of women “in ‘interpersonal’ education, health care support, and personal care services appears to shelter them,” the report adds.