Many employees underestimate the risk of automation affecting their jobs. In this interview, Philipp Lergetporer, Professor of Economics at the TUM Campus Heilbronn, talks about the motivation to embrace continuing education and how the upskilling system has to change.

Prof. Lergetporer, what skills has digital transformation made obsolete?

Prof. Lergetporer: Some aspects of digital transformation are reminiscent of radical changes in the past. In the 1990s, conveyor belt workers no longer were needed because robots suddenly were able to insert screws. Today’s AI applications allow us to automate other chores as well. Transformation is pushing out functions that can be assumed by new machines and technologies, and at the same time it is causing increased demand for new skills that complement these new technologies.

Isn’t generative AI replacing a lot of creative work as well?

Prof. Lergetporer: For sure. At the same time, new tasks are emerging. Copywriters presumably will not write complete texts anymore, but they should be able to write prompts that bring out the best in AI applications. We are expecting a shift towards an increase in supervision activities.

What professions are particularly affected and what skills will become important?

Prof. Lergetporer: In the past, mostly people with limited qualifications were affected. The digital transformation will likely reinforce that. While I cannot name any specific occupations, we know that many skills that complement the new technologies now are appreciated to a larger extent, including prompt engineering, specific IT skills, and fields such as social interactions for which machines are not suited. The biggest challenge will be to adjust one’s own skillset to the requirements of the labor market.

The biggest challenge will be to adjust one’s own skillset to the requirements of the labor market.

Prof. Philipp Lergetporer
Professor of Economics

The results of your study indicate that especially people with limited qualifications underestimate the risk of automation eliminating their jobs.

Prof. Lergetporer: We have a hypothesis that these workers simply are misinformed about the risk that comes with automation. For our study, we interviewed 3,000 employees about the jobs they currently are doing and about the percentage of their main tasks they believe could be automated. Mainly respondents exposed to a high risk of automation underestimated the percentage considerably. We proceeded to inform a randomly selected group of these respondents about the probability of automation in their individual cases. This piece of information alone significantly increased their awareness of the problem, which led them to state greater probability of enrolling in an upskilling or retraining program in the future.

Who could convey this type of information?

Prof. Lergetporer: The main question is: How can we promote upskilling effectively. It will be a group effort involving lots of players. At the macro level, the government is a crucial creator. People often claim that Germany has no consistent upskilling system. According to the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, introducing a dual system in the style of Germany’s education system could solve the problem. At the other end of the spectrum, we have the large number of workers who do not want or are unable to upskill. Cognition psychologists have found that people can learn at any age. These barriers must be addressed at the individual level. There are other relevant players including companies and educational institutions between the two ends of the spectrum. While companies deem upskilling to be a key strategy to counter skills shortages, they often are reluctant to enroll employees in upskilling programs if they are needed on the job urgently.

Will automation pick up speed?

Prof. Lergetporer: The potential of automation will continue to increase. The data for our study originates from a time before AI tools such as ChatGPT were introduced to the market. Since then, we have seen that text writing, graph designing, and other activities can be completed with a few prompts. The type of tasks that also can be automated going forward will surprise us.

Check the Magazine MINDSHIFT for more interesting stories from TUM Campus Heilbronn.