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Key takeaways

• By 2029, over 32 million roles will be transformed by AI annually.
• Employees and their managers should prepare for four scenarios.
• The interconnected nature of work means all eventualities are possible.

Some experts have suggested that AI will lead to a 'jobs apocalypse', yet tech analyst Gartner predicts 'jobs chaos', a general ripple effect throughout the labor market, where every business and professional will have to adapt.

Helen Poitevin, distinguished VP analyst at Gartner, suggested to that the explanation for this chaos is that AI will have an incremental impact on workplace roles and the skills required.

"Most companies will be navigating a continuous race to add AI in differentiating ways, to rethink workflows and start to redesign roles, and that is where the chaos comes in," she said.

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Companies across all sectors are slowly finding ways to exploit generative and agentic AI. As these successful exploitations become manifest, the result will be a shift in the way we work.

Starting in 2028-2029, role redesign will be the priority. Gartner reports that AI will create more jobs than it eliminates, yet over 32 million roles will be transformed significantly each year. Every day, 150,000 jobs will evolve through upskilling, while 70,000 will be rewritten, reworked, or redesigned.

For IT professionals anxious about the demise of white-collar work, this AI-enabled redesign -- rather than worker replacement -- sounds like good news.

However, Poitevin issued a warning: companies and their staff that don't focus on the right areas now will struggle in three years when the jobs chaos takes hold.

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To help business leaders manage this shift, Gartner has created four future scenarios. While these present different endpoints, the interconnected nature of AI-enabled work means professionals and their managers must plan for all eventualities.

"Watch out for blind spots," she said. "When you expect fewer workers in one place, you'll likely get more workers in another. And even when you're focused on supporting more workers, you'll find places where you can't find enough people to do the work that remains."

Here are the four ways workplace roles could change, and here's how business leaders and up-and-coming professionals can get ready for this workplace revolution.

Scenario 1: More automation means fewer workers

In this scenario, humans want AI to do the work. However, despite the hype surrounding emerging tech, work is not significantly transformed.

While AI can complete a large proportion of the work, Poitevin said people fill in the gaps where AI can't complete tasks effectively.

"With AI, your tasks change slightly, or how you spend your time changes, but what you do overall as a professional in that space hasn't changed substantially," she said.

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She gave the example of customer service roles, where human representatives are still required to manage complex areas of work, but many tasks, such as sourcing answers to standard questions, are managed by AI.

Poitevin said "filling in the gaps" provides a work opportunity, but it might not be the type of role and responsibility that high achievers are seeking.

"Professionals who have career aspirations should be looking more towards transformation and how they can use AI to work better. They should be aiming to use AI to surpass frontiers of knowledge."

Scenario 2: Fewer workers run an AI-first enterprise

In this scenario, AI autonomously handles part or the entirety of a business. In other words, AI replaces all, or all but a few, human workers.

Poitevin said this scenario is likely to affect certain sectors and functions more than others. She gave the example of performance marketing, a form of digital advertising where businesses only pay for measurable results, such as sales, leads, or clicks.

"It's an algorithm; there are actually very few people who work in that industry relative to the amount of money and volume of tasks flowing through it."

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Another example is physical AI, or robots, undertaking forms of deep-sea diving that would be impossible today due to the dangers involved.

Poitevin said many business leaders and up-and-coming professionals could feel that this resource-light area seems like a great place to be. However, the interconnected nature of work means humans will remain very much in the loop.

"Don't be oversold by what this scenario might represent. There's a very high temptation to think that this is the ideal place to be," she said.

"But part of what we've learnt in preparing for all scenarios is that whichever one you aim for, you create requirements in the other three. So, even if you aim fully for this work scenario, because you want to employ fewer people in an AI-first enterprise, you'll still need many busy workers in other parts of your organization."

Scenario 3: Busy workers use AI to work better

Here, work is the same as now, said Poitevin, but employees use AI heavily: "It's the gen AI assistant, helping us find information more quickly, composing some text, checking our emails to ensure we have the right tone, and little things like this that help us in our day-to-day work."

Another example is software developers using a coding assistant or academics using AI for deep research: "So, your job really hasn't changed. Your profession is the same, but AI becomes a big part of how you conduct your tasks and get to information."

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Poitevin said this scenario focuses on AI adding value to work and subtly widening the current scope of professionals, often in positive ways.

"It's a scenario of lesser change than most anticipate," she said. "And when you look at the way that so many organizations are investing in AI, it's very realistic to think that many of them will remain in this scenario."

Poitevin advised all professionals to start exploring now how AI can boost productivity, and she suggested managers should give their staff a helping hand.

"This is where you aim to build AI literacy and try to help people find that 'aha moment' where AI at work suddenly makes sense, and that's going to vary from worker to worker," she said.

Scenario 4: Innovators and AI create new knowledge

In this final state, professionals use AI to revolutionize their fields of work. Poitevin described this scenario as pushing AI to the edge of transformation.

"This is where people use AI for things like material discovery, scientific research, but also security, where they're trying to get ahead of more complex threats and to respond more effectively," she said.

"All these areas drive a lot more cross-disciplinary work, and it's about using AI to get to the answers that we couldn't get to before."

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Poitevin said another example is the pioneering area of personalized medicine. These developments will only happen if humans connect different fields, share information, and expand their understanding.

"If you are creative and curious and driven to find and solve complex problems, this is the place to be," she said to people considering skills development in the age of AI. "Focus on learning, agility and adaptability, curiosity and innovation, those are the things that will help people evolve into these spaces."

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