White-collar jobs at risk as AI replaces data-heavy analysis tasks

White-collar, corporate jobs could be in the firing line as artificial intelligence proves quicker at tasks requiring data-heavy tech skills

For four years, Beijing-based Clare Zhang worked as a research analyst at a corporate advisory firm, helping companies assess technologies and competitors for projects they planned to list – until late last year, when she was told that artificial intelligence had reduced the number of analysts the company needed and could afford.

Her job involved combing through company filings and public records to produce market and competitor studies that sometimes ran to 500 pages. But AI could increasingly collect and organise the information, analyse data and generate charts in a fraction of the time.

Zhang said the company’s human resources department explicitly cited AI when dismissing her, explaining that it could no longer justify employing so many analysts. Two of her former colleagues were laid off shortly afterwards.

The pressure soon spread beyond individual jobs. Zhang recently learned that her former boss was also struggling with a declining number of clients, as they increasingly brought research in-house with AI, though her team had warned clients that AI could invent sources and produce convincing but unreliable findings.

“They would rather trust AI because our reports were considered too expensive,” Zhang said.

In May, a Chinese court ruled it was illegal for a company to terminate an employee on the grounds that an artificial intelligence replacement would be cheaper, after a 35-year-old worker, who oversaw AI-generated responses at a Hangzhou fintech firm, was fired over refusing a demotion and pay cut.