High-skilled Human Workers in Non-Routine Jobs are Susceptible to AI Automation but Wage Benefits Differ between Occupations

Abstract: AI will change human work by taking over specific job tasks, but there is a debate which tasks are susceptible to automation, and whether AI will augment or replace workers and affect wages. By combining data on job tasks with a measure of AI susceptibility, we show that more highly skilled workers are more susceptible to AI automation, and that analytical non-routine tasks are at risk to be impacted by AI. Moreover, we observe that wage growth premiums for the lowest and the highest required skill level appear unrelated to AI susceptibility and that workers in occupations with many routine tasks saw higher wage growth if their work was more strongly susceptible to AI. Our findings imply that AI has the potential to affect human workers differently than canonical economic theories about the impact of technology on work these theories predict.