Phoenix among top cities at risk of job losses due to AI
Workers have already been slow to return to the office post-pandemic. Now, concerns over possible replacement by AI technologies has created new pressures for Phoenix-area companies and skilled workers across many industries. Photo by Polina Zimmerman/Pexels
Technological advances have long transformed the way people work, but the current pace of change appears unprecedented. From the advent of personal computers in the 1970s to the introduction of the World Wide Web in the 1990s, followed by the emergence of smartphones, social media, and cloud computing in the 2000s, recent decades have seen significant shifts in how we work. And now, in the 2020s, the latest transformational force appears to be artificial intelligence, or AI.
As we continue to adopt AI into our everyday lives, uncertainty has seeped into several industries, like insurance, accounting and many others, stoking concern among impacted companies and specialized workers.
One recent study conducted by (un)Common Logic, using Bureau of Labor Statistics data and several artificial intelligence studies, uncovered the cities with the most workers at risk of AI job displacement and the industries where AI poses the greatest threat, which in the Southwest includes Metro Phoenix, Las Vegas, Tucson.