Page 18 - The Annual AI Governance Report 2025 Steering the Future of AI

The Annual AI Governance Report 2025: Steering the Future of AI Socioeconomic Theme 2: AI and

Source: Anthropic 27

Future of Jobs. There are growing mismatches in the labor market, with simultaneous shortages
and surpluses across different roles and sectors. Labor shortages are expected in high-skill areas
such as technology, healthcare, and green energy, driven by rising demand and insufficient
supply of qualified talent. Conversely, labor surpluses are projected in roles involving routine
or manual tasks, especially in manufacturing, administration, and low-skill services, as these
are increasingly subject to automation and declining demand. These imbalances are likely to
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intensify unless proactive reskilling and workforce transition strategies are implemented.

Research from the Stanford Social and Language Technologies Lab takes a worker-centric
approach to understanding opportunities for human-agent collaboration. They find that for
46.1% of tasks, workers currently performing them express a “positive attitude” towards agent
automation, even after considering concerns around job loss; this motivation comes from
“freeing up time for high-value work,” reducing “task-repetitiveness” and “stressfulness” and
increasing opportunities of quality improvement. This research classifies automation research
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into four useful categories:
1. Automation “Green Light” Zone: Tasks with both high automation desire and high
capability. These are prime candidates for AI agent deployment with the potential for
broad productivity and societal gains.
2. Automation “Red Light” Zone: Tasks with high capability but low desire. Deployment
here warrants caution, as it may face worker resistance or pose broader negative societal
implications.
3. R&D Opportunity Zone: Tasks with high desire but currently low capability. These represent
promising directions for AI research.
4. Low Priority Zone: Tasks with both low desire and low capability. 30

27 Anthropic, “Anthropic Economic Index: AI’s Impact on Software Development,” Anthropic Research, April
28, 2025, https:// www .anthropic .com/ research/ impact -software -development.
28 Strack, R., Carrasco, M., Kolo, P., Nouri, N., Priddis, M., George, R., Boston Consulting Group, & Faethm.
(2021). The Future of Jobs in the Era of AI.
29 Shao, T., Zope, H., Jiang, H., Pei, J., Nguyen, F., Brynjolfsson, E., Yang, D. (2024) Future of work with AI
Agents, Stanford University Social and Language Technologies Lab.
30 Shao, T., Zope, H., Jiang, H., Pei, J., Nguyen, F., Brynjolfsson, E., Yang, D. (2024) Future of work with AI
Agents, Stanford University Social and Language Technologies Lab.

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