Jobs of Tomorrow Technology and the Future of the Worlds Largest Workforces 2025

1 This technology incorporates machine learning and data processing, genAI, artificial general intelligence and agentic AI. Artificial intelligence (AI) has been especially topical since the release and rapid uptake of consumer-focused genAI models, and 86% of employers expect it will transform their organization by 2030.3 Organizations have long harnessed machine learning to enhance workforce efficiency in areas such as maintenance scheduling, fraud prevention and tailored customer services.4 GenAI, meanwhile, became commonplace after the release of ChatGPT in November 2022. Many organizations continue to grapple with how this technology can be most effective and how it could transform their workforce needs. Some experts believe agentic AI will be the most transformative component of the technology, with AI agents drawing on genAI technology to perform tasks independently with user direction and oversight. While this technology carries potential to enhance worker productivity or capability, it carries substantial risks related to privacy, reliability and economic value structures.1.1 Artificial intelligenceWorkforce-transforming technologies Artificial intelligence, robotics, energy and sensing technologies promise productivity gains while intensifying risks. The Global Future Council on Jobs and Frontier Technologies defines workforce-transforming technologies as recent technological advances with the potential to rapidly transform the workforce. Such advancements would provide productivity or capability boosts to help address society’s key challenges, and have substantial or systemic risk that requires governance and/or compliance enhancements.After reviewing global employers’ expectations (set out in the Future of Jobs Report 2025), aggregating the council’s experience with workforce- transforming technologies and assessing the workforce implications of emerging technologies, the council identified the following four frontier technologies as having the greatest workforce transformation potential. The convergence of AI, advanced hardware and vision systems is beginning to enable robots and autonomous systems to perform an expanding array of functions. These systems are also referred to as physical AI. The application of robots and autonomous systems has been steadily growing around 5-7% annually since 2020.5 With an estimated 40% cost reduction in the last two years,6 this growth is expected to continue. Robot installations are heavily concentrated in China, Japan, the US, the Republic of Korea and Germany, collectively accounting for 80% of global robot installations in 2022.7 Physical AI developments create an opportunity for new roles and enhanced worker productivity8 – however, this outcome will depend on choices made in the coming years.1.2 Robotics and autonomous systems86% of employers expect genAI to transform their organization by 2030. Jobs of Tomorrow: Technology and the Future of the World’s Largest Workforces 5