"The Visible Impact of AI Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg"
A research team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has found that current artificial intelligence (AI) technology has reached a level where it could replace 11.7% of the U.S. workforce. The researchers noted that the use of AI is rapidly expanding not only in technology sectors but also in areas such as human resources, logistics, and finance, and that structural changes could occur across the entire labor market, both in urban and non-urban areas.
According to CNBC, a U.S. business media outlet, on November 26 (local time), a joint research team from MIT and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) under the U.S. Department of Energy announced that currently deployed AI technology has reached a level where it could replace 11.7% of the U.S. labor market.
The researchers developed the 'Iceberg Index' to measure the impact of AI technology on the U.S. labor market. They explained, "With the Iceberg Index, we have created a 'mixed society' where more than 150 million workers and thousands of AI agents interact. This allows us to measure the ripple effects of AI capabilities on human skills and to assess how much each skill and community is exposed to AI." They added, "Until now, we have spent a lot of time making AI 'smarter,' but what matters now is predicting what will happen when AI interacts with humans. The Iceberg Index explores this new territory."
According to the analysis, the 'visible' AI adoption technologies concentrated in computing and technology fields account for 2.2% of total wage value (about 211 billion dollars), but the researchers assessed that this is "just the tip of the iceberg." In particular, they estimated that the value of AI technology applicable across human resources, logistics, finance, and general office work reaches 11.7% of the total U.S. workforce wage (about 1.2 trillion dollars). They explained that these areas of work are often not captured by simulation-based predictions.
This impact is not limited to urban areas but is widely spread across all 50 U.S. states, including non-urban regions. The researchers emphasized that indicators such as gross domestic product (GDP), income, and unemployment rates explain less than 5% of technology-driven changes, highlighting the need for new approaches to capture the impact of AI on the economy. They argued that traditional economic indicators alone cannot fully reveal the changes AI brings to job structures and work processes, and that a separate analytical framework is needed to capture these invisible effects.
The researchers noted that the 'Iceberg Index' is not a tool for pinpointing exactly when or where jobs will disappear. Instead, it provides a 'snapshot' of which skills current AI systems can replace, allowing policymakers to systematically review various assumptions before allocating real budgets or enacting laws. The researchers stated that this study will enable business leaders to identify which areas are particularly vulnerable to AI, and to set priorities for necessary training, workforce retraining, and infrastructure investment.
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