Artificial intelligence (AI) has stunned many with the speed of its innovation and threat to jobs, but uniting employers and trade unions in shared opinion is another unexpected wonder of this technology.Both sides believe the Government needs to do more to mitigate what a growing number of observers believe will be a big upheaval in the jobs market arising from the rapid development of AI.In the week when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned 40 per cent of Irish jobs could be affected by AI and even Pope Leo devoted his first encyclical to the issue calling for AI to be “disarmed” and used for the common good of mankind, others have joined the chorus of concerns. Employers’ group Ibec called for greater investment in retraining and upskilling, a view supported by unions which believe Ireland’s 23-year-old redundancy legislation needs to be updated.In previous research, the Department of Finance put the share of Irish jobs likely to be affected by AI at 60 per cent but Ibec considers this an underestimate.“From our perspective, it’s really 100 per cent,” says Ger Brady, chief economist and head of national policy at the representative body for business and industry.“Because if you are not dealing with or using AI directly, you’ll be in the supply chain of someone who is and that means that you’re going to be interacting with it in some way in the very near future.“We’re not talking in sci-fi terms, within the 10 years or 20 years: it’s the immediate future, it’s happening now and there is maybe a feeling among businesses that the Government doesn’t quite get the sense of urgency there is about it.”Brady believes that almost all of the three million people working in Ireland “will see their jobs change, unless you’re completely working with your hands ... and even then, it will change the way you invoice”.He notes how many programmes to reskill employees for new roles are oversubscribed due to a lack of funding and National Training Fund (NTF) is on course to have a surplus of €3 billion by the end of the decade.[ What are the jobs AI won’t be coming for?Opens in new window ]“So it makes no sense to be stockpiling money in the NTF when we’re probably facing the biggest transition in the labour market in decades and we could be using it for training,” he says.Irish workers are already feeling the pinch from AI amid growing fears that the great AI job displacement has already begun.Meta and one of its contractors, Covalen, made recent headlines as they announced combined cuts of 1,070 jobs, as the social media giant invests in AI teams that would result in “flattening teams”.The job losses have brought home the reality of AI to some in a sector where total employment has declined by just over 20,000 jobs in the year to March.Some in the tech sector have accused Big Tech of using AI as an excuse to address “over-hiring” during Covid pandemic but the announcement by Meta follows multibillion dollar investment in AI by the social media company, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp. This year alone, Meta will invest about €125 billion in AI and, in addition to the 8,000 jobs axed globally, many more were told they were being redeployed to AI development and implementation.Trayc Keevans: Companies 'are figuring out what are they doing or how do they do it' with regard to AI “The idea that this is about companies just looking to cut costs was probably true in a lot of cases up to six months ago but there is a lot of change now and it’s happening fast. AI adoption is really starting to take hold,” says Trayc Keevans, who oversees research at recruiting firm Morgan McKinley and advises overseas firms on hiring in Ireland.She says companies are using AI “to automate repeatable tasks and workers are either being let go or they’re being absorbed into other areas, being trained to perform other roles or into oversight roles, so that they supervise the AI”.Keevans notes that the unemployment rate would give the sense that “nothing’s really changing” but there is more contract-hiring of staff than a year ago as companies “are figuring out what are they doing or how do they do it” – an indication of the uncertainty companies are experiencing.What has been underreported, she says, is the number of new roles already created by the roll-out of the technology. About 80 new, distinct job titles including prompt engineer, answer engine optimisation (AEO) specialist and AI ethics managers, according to research by Morgan McKinley.[ AI revolution to have severe effect on Irish economy with top-end job losses, report warnsOpens in new window ]“Some have evolved from existing roles,” she says, “and others are entirely new.” Even where job titles or job specs have not been updated, companies are telling the recruitment company that they want staff with AI skills, says Keevans.Graduate hiring has been hit too, she says, with those emerging from college having to be a good deal more flexible in how they take their first career steps. Banking and insurance feature prominently in the lists of sectors expected to be hit most severely by the coming tidal wave of technological change from AI.A trade unionist representing workers in the sector – Financial Services Union general secretary John O’Connell – isn’t entirely convinced by the worst-case scenarios projected in the AI revolution, though he concedes: “It would be foolish not to be concerned.”Alongside papers or reports about the job losses, there are others that say “the technology is going to be complementary, that it’s not necessarily going to be catastrophic at all,” he says. “It obviously is going to have an impact, though, and the Government can’t simply be an observer on it; they have to get out ahead of it and lead.”[ The Irish Times view on AI: tentative State response needs to ramp upOpens in new window ]His trade union supports the idea of ramping up funding for training.It also wants to see a forum for dialogue between all of the people affected akin to the Retail Banking Review Dialogue established in 2022 by then minister for finance Paschal Donohoe on the future of retail banking.“We’re not saying things can’t change, that they will never change ... it’s a question of how they will change,” he says.Unlike in the US, where Big Tech workers discover their jobs are gone and they are simultaneously locked out of their work system, the Irish statutory 30-day consultation period is aimed at exploring alternatives to job losses. However, O’Connell says it is seen as a “box-ticking exercise” by some of those Big Tech employers.O’Connell points to the case of Covalen’s job cuts as evidence that legislation on statutory redundancy needs to be updated. Many of the workers losing their jobs at the Meta contractor have received no redundancy payment because they were employed for less than two years. “Government can always do more,” says Malcolm Byrne TD, who chairs the Oireachtas joint committee on artificial intelligence, “but this is a right-across-society issue.”[ Will the AI ‘jobs apocalypse’ cloud have a silver lining?Opens in new window ]“I’m an optimist, but I am worried about the impact that AI will have on people’s employment and their lives. People like certainty but if you’re in a job in an area you feel is at risk, you’re going to be very nervous – and it’s not just tech; the problem is across a wide range of sectors.”Preparing for AI is a majority priority for the Government, he says, and its focus is on seeing “where jobs are at risk”, and “upskilling and reskilling citizens to be able to deal with those challenges”. “Every employer, every worker should be talking about this and individuals should be asking: ‘What skills do I have that robots can’t replace and what are the skills that I might need to gain if I’m going to be working alongside AI into the future?’”