 Good afternoon everyone I'd like to welcome you to this press conference here at the 2018 annual meeting of the new champions. My name is Amanda Russo I'm one of the public engagement leads here at the World Economic Forum and a first a bit of housekeeping for those watching on our webcast hashtag AMNC 18 is what you'd like to use to interact with us on social media but I've a very exciting 25 to 30 minutes plan for the people in the room here I'm very pleased to welcome John Hawksburg and James Chang from PWC we're launching a very exciting report here at AMNC 18 what will be the net impact of AI and related technologies on jobs in China very topical very exciting and I know it's on the minds of many of the reporters here and you probably don't want to hear from me you want to hear from these guys here so John I'm going to introduce you John Hawksworth is the chief economist specializing in global macroeconomics and public policy issues at PWC he's the editor of PWC's global economic watch and world in 2050 reports in the in the author of the report we're going to be talking about today also is James Chang who he's here with us today PWC China financial services consulting lead he leads the team covering pretty much everything from a variety of professional solutions ranging from strategy risk finance operations IT and fintech so thank you gentlemen my first question will kick it off to you John can you just tell us some key findings about the report yes thanks very much so I think there's a general acceptance that AI and related technologies by which I mean things like robots drones driverless cars you know bring great benefits to the economy potentially but there is concern about jobs and I think one reason for this is that it's quite easy to see the kind of jobs that will be displaced you know if you have a driverless truck that's going to displace a truck driver but it's a little bit more difficult to conceptualize some of the jobs will be created of course you could say there's a few jobs for experts in AI and experts in robotics but beyond that you know it's difficult to come up with a large number of jobs that to match those would be displaced so what we tried to do in this study is to look at the broader macroeconomic benefits of AI and these other technologies in boosting economic growth and real incomes and work out how those could feed through into the broader economy and generate extra jobs so a key effect for example is that these technologies will boost productivity that will reduce costs and will allow companies to reduce prices so consumers then have more real incomes to spend on a variety of other goods and services and to produce those other goods and services you know you'll need extra people to some degree secondly they will tend to boost the profits and either companies themselves or their shareholders will reinvest those profits in R&D and capital investment to generate new goods and services which in turn will also create extra demand for people to actually help provide those and so it's only by taking that broader macroeconomic perspective that you can fully see the positive job creation side of AI and these other technologies and many of these jobs will be nothing to do with AI or robots they will just be the result of having a richer society more income more spending therefore more demand for labour so how do we put concrete numbers on this well I think firstly just the headlines and the study which is that we think that in the earlier study for the UK that we published in July we think that the job displacement job creation will broadly balance each other about 20% jobs displaced 20% jobs created in China we think that the balance will be positive with around 26% of jobs displaced over the next 20 years and about 38% created and as a result of that we actually think there will be a positive net benefit of around 12% to employment in China over the next 20 years which to put that absolute numbers is about 90 million extra jobs so it's a very significant number of extra jobs potentially as a result of these beneficial macroeconomic effects I talked about now if we look at where those jobs actually potentially come from I think the biggest number will come from the services sector and indeed we see a net boost the services employment of around 97 million you're the close to the 30% this will be particularly in areas like health care technical and scientific services information and communication services education where we see a large increase in the demand for those sectors I mean in health care with the ageing population in China and also where we see that the human touch is still to be needed so you can't fully automate those things of course there is room for automation and AI and robots to help in health care but more as compliments to human beings rather than totally replacing them so we see a big job boost in services we also see some job boost in construction where we see a further strong increase in demand in China as urbanization continues and potentially 200 million people more move to the cities over the next 30 40 years and also as China if you like construction companies start to work overseas on infrastructure projects linked to the Belt and Road initiative and that creates increased demand for labor there I think offsetting that we do see some decline in jobs in agriculture continuing a long-standing trend as there's more automation there and on manufacturing we see a broadly balanced picture on the one hand there would be less jobs in some of the traditional low value areas where China used to compete on cost but does China's wages have gone up increasing the some of those jobs in tech stars clothing footwear are already going to places like Bangladesh Vietnam and so on and China I think so there will be job losses there as there's more automation of those sectors in China but there will be compensating job gains because we see China is becoming the world leader in producing the new robots the new drones the new driverless vehicles and the other smart machines that will actually sort of power the fourth industrial revolution and so we do see therefore in manufacturing there will be a broad balance of job gains and job losses for that reason but the nature of the jobs and the focus of those sectors in China will change so overall it is a very positive picture of course there are many uncertainties around any such estimates and we've looked at a number of different scenarios in the report and the number of different assumptions but I think in general we find that even in a more pessimistic scenario where AI has less impact and perhaps there's more job displacement we're still likely to see some kind of net positive effect even if it's rather smaller than in our central estimates so for China I think we do see that the conclusion that there's some positive net benefit is relatively robust but this and say there's room for complacency because there will be huge disruption in this process we are talking about potentially 200 million jobs displaced over the next 20 years and 290 million jobs created so it will be need for huge career changes for many people people moving between sectors and careers people potentially moving between locations of course China's already seen this over the last 40 years of people who moved in large numbers from the farms to the city so this is nothing new in China but I think there's a further process going on there and therefore there's a need to invest in retraining in other areas so there's no room for complacency but over all our message is positive not just in terms of the benefits for GDP but also in terms of the benefits for employment in China in the long run. Great everyone got all that John thank you very much James if we could ask about the business and policy implications of this study what would you what would your statement be? Yeah as John mentioned AI brings both the I guess the positive impact as well as the negative impact now we all know China has implement this so-called next generation AI plan well created that plan the key is right now to execution how can China actually execute it in a good way where you could fully maximize the benefit but mitigate the harms so let me talk about how do we maximize the benefit a lot of new jobs are going to coming from those areas where AI technology as well AI design and the infrastructure all needs to be created and the designer and the deployed so for example we all know China is still in rapid urbanization stages we're talking about there's like hundreds hundreds of small cities has been built around the countries and we all know small city requires a lot of a so-called a smart principles and that is basically using all the AI techniques whether it's smart traffic control to reduce the congestions smart energy grid to improve the energy consumptions and reduce the pollutions as well as a medical and healthcare elderly care related related on fact related areas so this is certainly there's a lot of opportunities in that area right and the second areas where China should consider to maximize the benefit is that on education process we all know it's as as the talent pool shifts towards those new skill sets on the the college and the education's need to upgrade its curriculum and we all know here China it's in when comes to the education they're still very kind of traditional in the behind in those area so it will be very beneficial for China to open that and connect internationally and really bring some of the international academic experts and into this area and the create that connectivity and therefore benefit and upgrade education system now how do we minimize the the harm as John mentioned there's a lot of people going to lose the job especially those that are very low-end or middle level of technical skills from policy perspective you need to create a pause which will help these people to retool their skills at retrain their profession and maybe add some social safety now to make sure when others getting the benefit and the those who's being impacted negatively the negative impact being reduced to the minimum therefore we make sure you know the overall as John mentioned the overall there's a net positive impact being shared equally because every time think about it you know you look at every industrialization there seems to be a more I guess a widening of the inequality in this whole society this is not just in China but globally and we want to make sure during this so-called a force industrialization or AI driven technology innovations we make sure the whole society globally everyone gets the benefit and the share the benefits thank you I one question before we open it up to the group obviously China is is a global leaders a global player I'm assuming this data will have global impact and global repercussions I don't know can you guys comment on on the wider impact yeah well shall I give a few remarks and James can add to that so I think certainly I mean China is I think depending on how you measure it the first or second largest economy in the world and certainly within the next 20 years it will become the biggest economy in the world according to our projections in this and other reports so China's has a huge impact it's also a very open economy it trades and invests a lot and I think we can increasingly see that China's becoming the world leader in many of these technologies around mobile technology AI and other things and I think you know because it has this huge domestic market that it can then leverage that as a platform to then go global now the moment the focus may be in China on trying to make the most of the domestic market because it's so large and make the most of the huge pool of data which is available in China which is absolutely critical for AI and machine learning models to have that huge pool of data but that then gives a fantastic platform for China actually to become an international leader as well as China gradually opens up in all sorts of ways financially and otherwise I was just in the session now talking about China's financial opening as this opening continues then I think China will really have a major impact on global technological change and it will become the global leader in many of these technologies and as I say it will become the manufacturer of robots and other things exporting to the rest of the world I think it's also worth just saying we have looked at some other countries and you know I think for the UK I think we see that job gains and job losses are more or less balanced so whereas in China it's net positive for the UK it's about 20% job losses 20% job gains and UK according to our other research is fairly average across the OECD countries so while it won't be true of every single OECD country I think for the mature developed countries in Western Europe say or possibly also the US I think again we'd see a broadly balanced picture so a lot of the net gains globally may actually come from China China is actually the area where we're probably seeing the biggest gains because of this big market because of the big government investment in AI and because of the very strong education level in science technology maths and other relevant subjects yeah I'll just add a couple points China should really take this opportunity and to transition itself used to be more like a create or copy to China or made in China to now create in China being more innovative through this AI there's a reason I believe unlike the first couple I guess industrialization where China was really behind both in terms of technology capital and the peak talents but in this stage of industrialization first of all China has a lot of capital but more importantly from AI perspective China has a lot of data right because we all know AI is about data algorithm and the computation power everyone has the algorithm and the computation power but China has the most data because you know why we have four a 1.4 billion people and it has the highest what we call a 4g on and as soon to be 5g penetrations and most on average based on I think our analysis of the Chinese users on average spends more on the social medias and there's a lot of what we call the data touch point we which really helps to train the model in the algorithm and and also stuff there's stuff like the for example voice in the net natural language because the Chinese language itself is very unique and a specific when come to say do the natural language processing the Western companies cannot process or able to train the model and therefore you have all this advantage to for China really to take a leapfrog on this area being more innovative but just watch our one thing is ethical and privacy right when we're using this data and then make sure we we really watch out for privacy and being what we call that ethical consumerism thank you I'm sure the audience has a few questions I'd like to open this up yes we have someone right here in the front I'm from economic daily so in the 20 features in the 20 years so yesterday I read at the web from 2018 to 2022 the impact of AI on job market so can you give me a perspective for the future for the next four years AI's impact on the job market in China question this reporter was talking about you know the WF also issued a report but it's for 2022 it's next four years and how do we reconcile to first of all I haven't see that report or I may kind of like a so I don't know what's their actual projection sorry the interpreters can't here but it sounds like 75 that million issued this morning so I haven't yeah I haven't seen it we've been busy with our own report but you know I think in general you know I think the report is saying the same sort of things there will be a positive net impact and jobs I think in terms of the profile what we expect from some of our researchers that there will be a kind of S-curve profile so initially the job impacts will be lower and then as we go through to the next of the three four years then it will begin to pick up for the 2020s and into the 2030s as some of these other technologies start to mature so we wouldn't necessarily expect to see such big impacts over the next of the three four five years we'll see some but they'll probably be of a smaller magnitude but it will really be later in the 2020s and into the 2030s that we see the biggest impacts that's that's what our research is suggesting yeah I would agree with that yeah did you understand that answer you we had the gentleman in the back yeah thank you I'm reporter from Caixi so could you put some color on the the jobs of the future I mean by the help of AI maybe we'll see some completed new jobs in the future so maybe you can give give us some examples on that thank you well I think there will be some completely new jobs but by definition it's hard for me to say what they are I mean if if we went back 20 years and you'd said well what would be a smartphone app developer I wouldn't have known what you're talking about because we didn't have any smartphones or apps so I think almost by definition it's impossible to be specific about what the jobs those kind of jobs will be and I think those sort of jobs also we did a previous study with a professor from Oxford University looking at the new job creation over the last 20 years this was a few years ago so it's 20 years before 2015 and we found only about five percent of UK jobs were totally new jobs most of them in the digital area the things around websites and smartphones and other sort of digital jobs so it's a relatively small number of jobs but high value high paid jobs but the most of the jobs we're talking about the extra jobs here are not new jobs of the future they're actually existing types of jobs like healthcare worker nurse doctor teacher other sort of jobs in areas that are high demand and in the richer society you can actually pay for more of us people so for example in healthcare you know you have a richer society the government gets more tax revenues the government can spend more on public health and education and therefore you can employ more people so it's not the case the jobs of the future in most cases won't be that different from the jobs of today just in the richer society you can afford them to pay for more people in the areas of high demand then there'll be a small number of these sort of AI related or robot related or drone related jobs which are very difficult to predict now what they will be because by definition they're difficult but will probably be quite small in numbers so that's generally how we see things mapping out I would just add it to it give you one example for example because I do a lot of financial services AI is already taking place a lot of what we call the analyst job right because typically for traditional analysts in the investment banking you need like you could probably read 10 analysts report you'll be so tired where the machine and AI could read about 100 report no problem at all right so it replace the analysts but then you need those programmer to design in the right those codes for the AI to read those report and how to assess those report similarly with the robot advisor right the robot advisor replaced the portfolio manager but you need those programmers and those who could design the robot advisor algorithm so that's the new job of being created yeah there were a couple of other hands there is another question just over there hello I'm from good afternoon I'm from China Economic Guideline that report is from a global view on the job market but I'd like to have a person of you on the job market some advice for example people some people the report said that journalists will be replaced by AI robots well I don't I don't know that journalists I mean to some extent of course some some articles online are already written by AI systems in some routine aspects of financial reporting sports reporting and other things so that's already happened to a degree but at the same time I think there's always going to be room for journalists who have a point of view so if you're a columnist you know with a certain point of view on something I think the ability to sort of synthesize information from a large number of different sources and come up with a distinctive point of view written with flair you know it's something that will always be needed and I think that we're still a long way from AI systems that can do that and also people ultimately you know if you're watching the news or something you're wanting to watch someone with a certain amount of personality you know who brings their own sort of point of view and their own you know intelligence to this so I think while one could not say never I think at least for the next you know the foreseeable future I think there will be plenty of roles within media and the journalism for humans to fill but I think it will be a matter of filling those roles where they can compliment and add to the if you like more routine aspects that the AI systems can cover rather than necessarily being exactly the same as the jobs of the past. Maybe we have time for one more question okay well seeing that I'm going to take this opportunity to ask one last thing from each of these gentlemen if you guys could end on one sound bite that you would like us to take away from this report what would it be John can we start with you. So firstly don't be afraid of some shop stories you read about robots and AI taking away jobs because we think at least in China they will probably create at least as many and probably more jobs than they destroy but at the same time don't be complacent because there is a danger that these things could also increase income inequality could increase the gap between the digital elite and ordinary people and so I think there needs to be big investment by government business and education that in retraining lifelong learning and in supporting through strong the safety that those people who may find it hard to adjust to new technologies. Okay James. Yeah so I think it's like any technology technology itself is a neutral there's always good side and the bad side and the key is both from policy and the business perspective fully aware and prepare for it as I said before trying to maximize the benefit and minimize the harm but only if you are fully aware and prepare otherwise you'll be caught. Alright so don't be afraid but don't get complacent is I think it's a great place and hopefully I'm going to take your advice to heart that moderators like myself will still be here even when we have AI hopefully you've enjoyed this press conference I would love to thank you all for coming I'd like to thank John I'd like to thank James thank you so much for sharing the report and your insights and thank you everyone for attending both here and online thank you. Thank you man. Thank you.