While there is no debate that artificial intelligence is going to have a significant impact on work and how it is done in the future, there isn't consensus on whether AI will be a net job creator or destroyer — helping workers to do their jobs better, creating better jobs for humans to do, or simply replacing a significant percentage of the workforce.
Workers are worried, but notably, the fears are nowhere near the majority view. About one-quarter (24%) have concerns that AI will make their job obsolete, with workers of color, younger workers, and lower-salaried workers more concerned, according to a CNBC/SurveyMonkey Workforce Survey done in May. Inside the C-suite at major corporations, where decisions will be made about AI implementation and return on investment, there is another notable split: top finance executives are more likely than top technology executives to see AI as a job destroyer.
Almost half (41%) of respondents to the latest quarterly survey of the CNBC CFO Council say they believe AI will destroy more jobs than it creates. An equal percentage say it's too soon to tell. But given the choice of potential futures, just 18% of CFOs say they see AI as a job creator.
That is in contrast to the nearly half (47%) of senior tech officials responding to a recent CNBC Technology Executive Council survey who said they think AI technologies will create more jobs than they destroy. There are tech executives who take a less rosy view: 26% said AI will destroy more jobs than it creates, while an equal 26% said it is too soon to know. But given the same choice as CFOs making the financial and cost decisions for companies, tech executives are the ones more likely to have an optimistic view.
CFOs, are by nature, cautious, and this shows up in the pace at which the executives see their companies investing in AI as well. More than 40% of CFOs surveyed said that while their companies are evaluating new investments in AI amid its boom, they are being cautious, with 32% responding that their investments are accelerating. Another 18% said their firms are planning no new AI investments.
For tech executives, AI is the clear priority. Nearly half of TEC members surveyed by CNBC said that AI is their top priority for tech spending over the next year, and AI budgets are more than double the second-biggest spending area in tech, cloud computing, at 21%.
Matt Higgins, CEO of private investment firm RSE Ventures, told CNBC's "Last Call" on Thursday that CFOs are making a mistake.
"My first reaction was one of horror," Higgins said of the 18% of CFO respondents who said their firms are planning no new AI investments. "I'm glad it is anonymous because they are going to regret it one day," he said.
"The CFOs should be an early adopter of AI because that's the low-hanging fruit," Higgins said. "You can go on Twitter right now and find 20 different tools that can potentially making someone's job easier, potentially take something that had been outsourced and bring it in-house. ... The CFO should be the one sending the annoying email to the CEO," he said.
Higgins said any top executive who indicates that their firm is planning no new AI investments is reflecting an "ignorance" that remains widespread in the U.S. corporate sector about what is taking place. He cited a recent PwC survey that shows only 25% of companies in the U.S. say they are deploying AI, while in China that same figure is at 58%. "A war is already underway that most people don't realize has started," he said.
Mark McDonald, senior director analyst in Gartner's finance practice, said that within the finance function specifically, he sees an opportunity for automation of many tasks. The automation of processes like validating numbers and checking data will allow people in finance roles to focus on analyzing and responding to data. This is a potential outcome that reflects belief among many AI leaders that AI will take over tasks that do not maximize human potential and allow workers to focus on higher order tasks.
McDonald, who focuses on the application and impact of AI and machine learning technologies, said this approach could be leveraged further across companies, providing opportunities where AI creates more jobs, or at least, enhances them, but also makes some lower-paying jobs less necessary. But he added that from a CFO and finance perspective, "there is no shortage of work."
"We are at the beginning of this era, and AI is still not being leveraged in the workplace, far from it," he said.
McDonald is still in the to-be-determined camp when it comes to AI as a net job creator or destroyer. "Any disruptive technology, of which AI certainly is one, you're going to see shifts in jobs – some jobs will go away, other jobs will be created," he said.
A definition answer on the jobs questions will take time to materialize, and a wait-and-see approach may be the right one. Moody's Analytics' chief economist Mark Zandi recently told CNBC that concerns that AI will lead to workers losing their jobs when companies see cost saving opportunities may be premature.
"If history is a guide and we look at other game-changing technologies, it does take time for those technologies to be incorporated into business practices," Zandi said. "Generally, it happens over periods of several years, even a couple of decades."
Zandi added that the implementation of AI might help workers garner larger salaries as overall productivity may increase.
"We are just at the first step of what's going to be a long, long transition," McDonald said. "I heard this elsewhere and I agree with it; this is industry 3.0 or 4.0, and this is going to change how we do things, how we think about things, and how we solve problems."
