SXSW EDU 2024: AI’s impact on every job

Saurabh Sanghvi, partner with McKinsey & Company, joined WorkingNation to share his thoughts on all roles being affected by AI
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AI, including generative AI, will have an impact on all jobs, says Saurabh Sanghvi, partner with McKinsey & Company.

He explains, “In our midpoint scenario, what we found is that about 30% of activities across all occupations can be impacted by AI including generative AI.”

Sanghvi joined WorkingNation’s editor-in-chief Ramona Schindelheim for WorkingNation Overheard at SXSW EDU 2024 in Austin.

Sanghvi notes that those impacts will not replace entire job roles and offers an example. “We did a recent survey where we found most teachers actually work 50 to 60 hours, which is beyond and above what they’re expected to do. And so the idea is – how can you actually help a teacher save 30% of their time and redirect that to actually some of the things that they uniquely can do that we think that generative AI or other technologies are still far from doing?”

He points out, “If we can do that, you could have teachers that are far less overworked and you can see an improvement in student outcomes.”

Different job roles are likely more affected by AI technology, explains Sanghvi. “When we studied all the different occupations, there are a category of roles particularly around customer service production, some amount of sales, some amount of food service jobs where we see that these jobs, actually even prior to generative AI, had been automated. About 50% of the job transitions that we saw in the last three years came in those categories.

“We expect that now looking forward about 80% of some of the transitions are going to happen there,” he says – affecting more heavily lower-wage workers and women.

Learn more about McKinsey & Company.

Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.