Ai Powered Automation Will Change Work But People Remain Indispensable

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Nov 29, 2025, 8:33 PM

ai powered automation will change work but people remain indispensable

Listen to this article in summarized format (Catch all the Technology News News, and Latest News Updates on The Economic Times.) Work in the future will be a partnership between people, agents, and robots—all powered by artificial intelligence. While much of the current public debate revolves around whether AI will lead to sweeping job losses, our focus is on how it will change the very building blocks of work—the skills that underpin... Our research suggests that although people may be shifted out of some work activities, many of their skills will remain essential. They will also be central in guiding and collaborating with AI, a change that is already redefining many roles across the economy.

In this research, we use “agents” and “robots” as broad, practical terms to describe all machines that can automate nonphysical and physical work, respectively. Many different technologies perform these functions, some based on AI and others not, with the boundaries between them fluid and changing. Using the terms in this expansive way lets us analyze how automation reshapes work overall.1Our analysis considers a broader range of automation technologies than the narrow definition of agents commonly used in the AI... For more on how we define the term, see the Glossary. This report builds on McKinsey’s long-running research on automation and the future of work. Earlier studies examined individual activities, while this analysis also looks at how AI will transform entire workflows and what this means for skills.

New forms of collaboration are emerging, creating skill partnerships between people and AI that raise demand for complementary human capabilities. Although the analysis focuses on the United States, many of the patterns it reveals—and their implications for employers, workers, and leaders—apply broadly to other advanced economies. We find that currently demonstrated technologies could, in theory, automate activities accounting for about 57 percent of US work hours today.2Our analysis focuses exclusively on paid productive hours in the US workforce, encompassing full-time... We assess only the share of time awake that is spent on work-related activities, totaling roughly 45 percent of waking hours. Our analysis excludes time spent on unpaid tasks and leisure, but agents and robots could be used in related activities to support productivity and personal well-being. This estimate reflects the technical potential for change in what people do, not a forecast of job losses.

As these technologies take on more complex sequences of tasks, people will remain vital to make them work effectively and do what machines cannot. Our assessment reflects today’s capabilities, which will continue to evolve, and adoption may take decades. Artificial intelligence has the potential to automate a significant portion of current work activities. However, this doesn't mean massive job losses are inevitable. Human skills like empathy, judgment, and social intelligence remain beyond automation's reach. The future workplace will likely feature humans working alongside AI systems in collaborative partnerships.

McKinsey finds AI could automate 70% of US work hours but humans remain crucial for social intelligence, judgment, and supervising automated systems. Artificial intelligence may be advancing rapidly across industries, but people will remain at the core of the future workplace, according to a new McKinsey Global Institute report that examines how automation will reshape labour... The study finds that currently demonstrated AI technologies could, in theory, automate activities equivalent to 57 per cent of today's US work hours, with digital "agents" able to perform non-physical tasks accounting for most... Robots could take on another 13 per cent of hours, mainly involving physical labour. However, researchers emphasise that this does not translate to equivalent job loss. Instead, most occupations will evolve as specific tasks are automated, shifting what work humans focus on rather than eliminating roles outright.

"Automation could, in theory, take on a majority of the work now done by people in the United States. That does not mean half of all jobs would disappear; many would change as specific tasks are automated, shifting what people do rather than eliminating the work itself," the report noted. A new report from McKinsey Global Institute tackles one of the most pressing fears of the modern economy: the sweeping job displacement threatened by artificial intelligence. While McKinsey’s research indicates that current technologies could, in theory, automate about 57% of U.S. work hours, the consulting firm concludes that this high figure measures technical potential in tasks, not the inevitable loss of jobs. Instead of mass replacement, the research by Lareina Yee, Anu Madgavkar, Sven Smit, Alexis Krivkovich, Michael Chui, María Jesús Ramírez, and Diego Castresana argues that the future of work will be defined by partnerships...

Their report, “Agents, robots, and us: Skill partnerships in the age of AI,” emphasizes that capturing AI’s massive potential economic value—about $2.9 trillion in the U.S. by 2030—depends entirely on human guidance and organizational redesign. The primary reason AI will not result in half the workforce being immediately sidelined is the enduring relevance of human skills. While they will be applied differently, McKinsey’s analysis shows a significant overlap in required capabilities: More than 70% of the skills sought by employers today are used in both automatable and non-automatable work. This suggests that as adoption advances, most skills will remain relevant, but how and where they are used will evolve. For example, highly specialized and automatable cognitive skills, such as routine accounting processes and specific programming languages, could face the greatest disruption.

Yet even as AI takes over tasks like preparing documents and basic research, workers will still be required to apply their existing skills in new contexts, focusing instead on framing questions and interpreting results. Crucially, skills rooted in social and emotional intelligence—such as interpersonal conflict resolution, design thinking, and negotiation and coaching—will remain uniquely human, demanding empathy, creativity, and contextual understanding that are challenging for machines to replicate. Furthermore, skills related to assisting and caring are likely to change the least. Automation replaces experts in some occupations while augmenting expertise in others, according to a new MIT study. As automation accelerates and large language models continue to improve, the dominant narrative has been about displacement: Technology takes over human tasks, roles are eroded, and wages suffer. But new research from MIT’s David Autor and Neil Thompson challenges the view that automation is always bad for workers.

In a sweeping study of U.S. occupations, the authors examined a long-standing economic puzzle: why some jobs that appear highly exposed to automation have not seen the wage collapse predicted by earlier models. In fact, their research shows that in some cases, pay has gone up. For instance, bookkeepers and accounting clerks saw computers take over many of their tasks between 1980 and 2018. Yet even as total employment in these roles fell by a third, their real hourly wages rose by nearly 40%. The reason: If automation removes the simpler parts of a job, the work that remains often demands more expertise — which can make that work more valued and better paid because fewer people are...

How fast can we scale AI?And how many people can we replace when we do? That’s the conversation happening in too many boardrooms today.But it’s the wrong one. For many leaders, the logic is simple: if we can automate more, we can grow leaner. If intelligent tools can do the work of five, why hire five? And we see it in the market—hiring freezes, leaner org charts. From a spreadsheet view, it makes perfect sense.

But if we follow that logic to its conclusion—if the goal is simply to do the same work with fewer people—we risk misunderstanding not just what AI is capable of, but what our organizations... Because here’s the truth: in a world where everyone has access to the same AI tools, the technology itself doesn’t give you an edge. The question isn’t just what AI can do. A new report from McKinsey finds that currently available AI technologies could, in principle, automate tasks equivalent to about 57% of today’s U.S. work hours — mostly non-physical, knowledge-based tasks handled by digital “agents.” Robots and other physical automation could cover another 13% of work hours, primarily tasks involving manual labor. However, the report emphasises this doesn’t mean half of all jobs will disappear.

Rather, what’s likely to happen is a shifting division of labor: many roles will transform as routine or repetitive tasks get automated, while humans take on new responsibilities. In this shift, humans are expected to supervise, validate, and guide AI and automation — especially when tasks call for judgment, empathy, or social-emotional intelligence. Crucially, the study argues that tasks requiring real-time perception, empathy, ethical judgment, creativity, or complex interpersonal interaction remain beyond what AI can reliably handle — at least for now. Roles such as teaching, nursing, counselling, sales with nuanced human feedback, or customer-facing functions likely remain rooted in human effort, because those jobs rely heavily on social and emotional intelligence. Looking ahead, the report envisions a future workforce that isn’t one of wholesale replacement, but of partnerships — between people, AI-powered agents, and robots. As automation expands, some traditional tasks will vanish or shrink, others will evolve, and novel job categories will emerge — especially around AI supervision, orchestration, quality control, and hybrid human-machine workflows.

Ai Powered Automation Will Change Work But People Remain Indispensable

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