"...[W]hile AI can help tackle global challenges and deliver considerable benefits, it also creates new challenges and questions, including for privacy, governance, research and work. To discuss these challenges and opportunities, as well as their policy implications, the OECD hosted the conference “AI: Intelligent machines, smart policies” in Paris on 26-27 October 2017, bringing together policymakers, representatives of civil society and AI experts from industry and academia.

One of the sessions focused on jobs and skills. AI matches or exceeds human performance in a growing number of domains, and several tasks traditionally performed by humans have already been taken over by robots and algorithms. Moreover, the general consensus is that the capabilities of AI will continue to grow and its use will become rapidly more widespread. The exponential growth of the capabilities and applicability of AI has raised concern about job automation and the possibility of massive technological unemployment, but also about its downwards impact on the wages of workers who are most at risk of being displaced...

Frank Levy, Rose Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology[...]argued that, with all the focus on what AI might do in the long-run, we risk are missing a lot of what is happening in the short-run. Indeed, those in lower- to mid-skilled occupations involving significant amounts of repetition have already been affected by technology and remain those at highest risk of losing their jobs...

Mr Hairston also stressed that making AI work for everyone requires having the right policies in place and, in particular, that governments needed to invest in people and skills so that individuals can seize grab the opportunities that lie ahead. He stressed that investing more in skills and facilitating greater labour mobility are were not new policy challenges..."