Your Paycheck Won't Be Stolen By AI, But The Same Can't Be Said For Your Job Description: Expect 30 Years Of Change In Next 3 Years, Says Indeed CEO

Artificial intelligence may not steal your paycheck, but it will raid your job description, warns Chris Hyams, the CEO of popular job-search platform Indeed.

What Happened: “The good news is that there's not a single job anywhere that AI can perform all of the skills required for that job,” Hyams told Fortune's Workplace Innovation Summit. “It doesn't mean it won't replace workers, but AI can't completely replace a job.”

Hyams' team found that "for about two-thirds of all jobs, 50% or more of those skills are things that today's generative AI can do reasonably well, or very well." The study, which dissected roughly two million postings skill by skill, highlights his blunt takeaway that "pretty much every job is going to change if it's not changing already."

The upheaval could come fast. Hyams predicted that "over the next three years" a handful of occupations will experience "30 years of change," forcing workers and hirers alike to "adapt very, very quickly." Indeed is already leaning in with Pathfinder, an AI "talent agent" slated for 2025 that matches candidates to openings even when résumés miss obvious keywords.

OpenAI Chief People Officer Julia Villagra echoed the call for flexibility, urging companies to "start changing the way we talk about job replacement" and embrace "a reimagination of jobs" rather than doom-scrolling automation headlines.

What Happened: A McKinsey study, which dates back to 2023, predicts that AI’s onset will necessitate around 12 million job switches and potentially automate 30% of the hours worked in the U.S. economy by 2030. Economists, meanwhile expect AI to jostle as many as 300 million full-time roles, yet most see a shuffle of tasks rather than wholesale layoffs.

Microsoft MSFT CEO Satya Nadella argues that AI will overhaul "knowledge work," not eliminate "knowledge workers," by offloading drudgery so humans can focus on higher-level tasks, echoing past shifts like fax giving way to email. His outlook is supported by Microsoft data showing 75% of global knowledge workers already use AI (nearly half adopted it within six months) and by real-world moves such as JPMorgan Chase JPM deploying AI to automate client briefings and legal paperwork.

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