In the past two years we have seen a rapid rise of so -called generative artificial intelligence (AI), i.e. of computer applications that can do a variety of different tasks on user instructions. While the AI trip since the publication of Chatgpt and Co. For many with the fun writing of poems or jokes, these tools have now become many indispensable companions in everyday life. Instead of googling, you use the virtual assistant and promptly get a suitable answer to all possible questions.
Generative AI has not only become more and more important in the private sector. The most recent stock exchange reactions for shares of chip manufacturers such as Nvidia have been showing the Chinese AI tool “Deepseek”, generative AI is now Big Business.
The rapid improvements of the AI applications make it possible to cover an increasingly wider spectrum of cognitively demanding tasks, and the increasing competition between the AI manufacturers ensures considerable price pressure, which will make the AI software cheaper and broader available.
What does this development mean for the job market? A just published study by an international research team, which I also participated, shows that generative AI has a variety of effects on the labor market.
For the study, millions of projects were analyzed on an online platform on which freelancers are conveyed with companies. Since the freelance activities on online platforms are often quite fast-moving and quickly adapt to new trends, they are particularly advisable to gain the first indications of how the labor market could change in the future.
The analysis now shows that it is not easy that generative AI devours jobs. While there are some activities that were much less in demand after the introduction of Chatgpt, there are also activities that have benefited from the introduction of Chatgpt. So whether generative AI is good or bad for your career depends entirely on the activity you do – or rather from the extent to which your job is replaced by AI or is more productive by AI.
Which professional fields could be most affected by these AI technologies and what new opportunities could arise?
Not only since the beginning of the hype about generative AI, many have worried whether their job can be replaced by digital technologies. In fact, the fear of technology -related unemployment is hundreds of years old. When automated weaving machines were invented at the beginning of the industrial revolution over two hundred years ago, the Weber went to the barricades and became machine strikers. By destroying the web machines, they wanted to prevent them from being replaced by unskilled people themselves and their lengthy learned craft of wool weaving. Their desperate protest was ultimately unsuccessful and could not prevent the triumphal march of industrialization and automation.
The labor market has changed fundamentally again and again due to technical developments in the past two hundred years. However, it is not the case that we have all become unemployed. On the contrary, in Germany the number of employment in 2024 achieved a new high with over 46 million employees.
This means that despite the considerable change in the world of work over time, the number of employees has increased more and more and the ubiquitous shortage of skilled workers shows us that we actually need a lot more employees.
What does this long-term trend tell us about the effects of AI technologies on the job market? Our research results indicate that the long -term trend of transformation of the labor market continues: While some jobs lose importance, other jobs are increasing. The professional fields that are most affected are all those in which generative AI significantly influences everyday work: so from writing to accounting and programming, to project management and graphic design ..
In most cases, however, employees are not replaced by generative AI technologies, but are made significantly more productive. Instead of sitting on a tricky programming task for a long time, a software developer now uploads his computer code to Chatgpt or Deepseek and shows from the machine how the code can be improved accordingly in order to solve the programming task. The result: a significantly increased productivity due to less time for formerly lengthy activities.
The new Ki tool Deepseek has just been published and promptly more popular than chatt; What does the popularity of AI mean for companies and employees?
The example above shows that generative AI can be expected to increase significant productivity increases. In principle, this is a good thing: Who would like to use unnecessarily long time for something that can be done much faster due to the clever use of a AI assistant? And this is exactly where the great potential of generative AI (and AI applications in general) for companies and employees in Germany, Europe and worldwide lies.
Anyone who is now able to integrate AI applications on a meaningful (i.e. productivity-increasing) way into their everyday work (or that of their employees) can gain a significant competitive advantage. Against this background -the users of AI tools -the new competition between American and Chinese AI companies can only be right for us: the competitive pressure leads to more innovation and cheaper prices for AI products and applications.
With his strategy to provide his AI tool with an “open source” license, Deepseek is once again taking new ground that should significantly increase the spread of AI applications in the economy. In contrast to other AI tools, users may adapt the deepseek as you like and access the source text of the software. It can be expected that innovative companies will not miss this opportunity and are now all the more trying to generate new AI applications that could either make existing processes more efficient, or can completely open up new markets.
Our research also shows that those jobs that could benefit the most from the AI boom are especially those who use AI: programmers of chatbots and all those who develop AI models or analyze large amounts of data.
What do German companies have to do to benefit from the AI hype?
Although the large manufacturers of AI software are in the USA and China, this does not mean that the AI hype has to pass Germany or that Germany (or Europe) cannot be third in the end.
The example of Deepseek's sudden popularity shows that it does not always have to be a blessing to be the first. If the development of Chatgpt 4.0 still cost an estimated one hundred million US dollars, the latest model from Deepseek could be developed with just a fraction of the costs. Specifically, this means that the development of powerful AI software is far from complete and it becomes cheaper.
Just as with other large technologies in the past, there will still be many progress in the area of AI development, which are only really helped to break the technology. So the car only became a mass product after John Ford was able to press the costs of car production with the assembly line production so that everyone could afford it.
So the fair in the area of generative AI is far from read. With every new model and with every new development, companies learn how a AI system can be raised efficiently. If AI systems spread as rapidly as at the moment, it is not unlikely that large companies will soon develop their own AI systems and design tailor-made solutions that are tailored to their industry.
This can be a great opportunity in particular for Germany. Germany is still a leader in important areas such as automotive construction, chemical industry and mechanical engineering. If German companies cleverly use the current attention to train their employees, to use AI systems in a targeted manner and to develop new tools themselves, Germany's competitiveness in these nuclear industries and in the economy as a whole can grant.
This requires a dynamic and courageous interaction of all participants: companies, employees, unions, educational institutions and government agencies at all levels. Employees must be familiarized with productive use, processes have to be changed and modernized, and the legal and regulatory framework must be created to make existing data treasures for research and innovation in the AI area usable in this country.
