AI Could Affect Almost Half of All Jobs Worldwide

The International Monetary Fund (IMF), a major financial agency of the United Nations, has warned in one of its publications that almost half of all jobs worldwide could be affected by Artificial Intelligence (AI).

In a staff discussion notes titled—"Gen-AI: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work", the publicarion authors of the IMF said, "Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to reshape the global economy, especially in the realm of labor markets. Advanced economies will experience the benefits and pitfalls of AI sooner than emerging market and developing economies."

Almost 40% of global employment is exposed to AI, with advanced economies at greater risk but also better poised to exploit AI benefits than emerging market and developing economies. In advanced economies, about 60% of jobs are exposed to AI, due to prevalence of cognitive-task-oriented jobs.

A new measure of potential AI complementarity suggests that, of these, about half may be negatively affected by AI, while the rest could benefit from enhanced productivity through AI integration. Overall exposure is 40% in emerging market economies and 26% in low-income countries.

Although many emerging market and developing economies may experience less immediate AI-related disruptions, they are also less ready to seize AI’s advantages. This could worsen the digital divide and cross-country income disparity.

About 40% of workers worldwide are in high-exposure occupations; the share is 60% in advanced economies, which indicates potentially large macroeconomic implications.

The IMF publication further said that it doesn’t see a future where AI displaces jobs like surgeons, lawyers, and judges — highly intricate roles that can’t just be handed off to unsupervised tech, thanks to legal and ethical barriers.

The UK has a significant portion of employment in professional and managerial occupations, which exhibit high exposure and high complementarity, and in clerical support workers and technician occupations, generally high exposure and low complementarity. In India most workers are craftspeople, skilled agricultural workers, and low-skilled, or “elementary” workers; most of these are in the low-exposure category.

In most countries, women tend to be employed in high-exposure occupations more than men. Because this share is distributed approximately equally between low- and high-complementarity jobs, the result can be interpreted to mean that women face both greater risks and greater opportunities, at the same time. Exceptions to this pattern may be attributed to high shares of women in agricultural jobs, especially in countries where the farming sector is large (for example, India).

Amid IMF’s Call to Drop Bitcoin Use, El Salvador Govt Leverages AlphaPoint to Power Chivo, the World’s 1st National Bitcoin Wallet

AlphaPoint provides software infrastructure technology supporting Chivo and integrating its entire financial ecosystem.

Chivo, the world’s first national crypto wallet, is now operating with AlphaPoint white label infrastructure. AlphaPoint, which provides fast, scalable financial technology to institutions globally, is helping El Salvador to offer financial services and access to Bitcoin for nearly 4.5 million Salvadorans actively using the wallet.

In September, El Salvador became the first country to adopt Bitcoin as a legal tender, as the government launched the Chivo wallet to facilitate Bitcoin transactions in the country. The government deposited $30 in Bitcoin in every El Salvadorans’ Chivo wallet as ‘seed money’ to propel Bitcoin transactions. With every McDonalds, Starbucks, Walmart, major airport and government office in the country already accepting Bitcoin with Chivo, the project has aspirations in the next year to simplify payment of home utilities, taxes, and many other daily transactions in Bitcoin as well. Chivo is also in the process of deploying 1,500 Bitcoin ATMs around the country to more readily serve the Salvadoran population. By the end of 2021, around 75% percent of the population had downloaded Chivo.

AlphaPoint supports the frontend and backend infrastructure that powers the wallet and integrates the entire ecosystem including the mobile application, mobile point-of-sale processing, merchant website portal, call-center support software, and administrative console. Their build focuses heavily on wallet stability and uptime, scalability, and social impact, while also integrating user verification services leveraging machine-learning facial recognition and authentication tools. AlphaPoint also improved the Lightning integration for nearly instantaneous low-fee Bitcoin transactions via QR and Lightning addresses.

Chivo is the largest fintech application in the country and is providing infrastructure to bring the 70 percent unbanked population of the country into the financial ecosystem. The AlphaPoint-powered wallet facilitated over 2 million transactions last month alone, with more businesses enabling transactions every day. The wallet is free to use for all Salvadorans, with zero commissions.

“El Salvador and President Bukele are truly leading globally with this first major experiment in Bitcoin adoption at a country-wide level,” Igor Telyatnikov, Co-founder and CEO of AlphaPoint said. “No one else has attempted to execute a project of this size. We at AlphaPoint are honored to be involved in the process and provide the scalable and reliable solutions needed for this massive undertaking. The Chivo application is currently supporting millions of Salvadorans, many for their first time accessing financial services.”

AlphaPoint was the first white label marketplace provider in the cryptocurrency industry and has been a trusted solution for large-scale institutional-grade exchange infrastructure for more than eight years. It is considered a foundational member of the industry with focused priorities in scalability, security, and flexibility to serve clients around the world.

About AlphaPoint

AlphaPoint is a white-label marketplace software company powering digital asset exchanges worldwide. Through its secure, scalable, and customizable digital asset trading platform, AlphaPoint has enabled over 150 customers in 35 countries to launch and operate digital asset markets, as well as to digitize assets. AlphaPoint and its award-winning blockchain technology have helped startups and institutions discover and execute their blockchain strategies since 2013.

World has Entered Recession, Says IMF

The world is in the face of a devastating impact due to the coronavirus pandemic and has clearly entered a recession, the International Monetary Fund said on Friday, but projected a recovery next year.

"We have reassessed the prospects for growth for 2020 and 2021. It is now clear that we have entered a recession as bad or worse than in 2009. We do project recovery in 2021," IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told reporters at a news conference.

Georgieva was addressing the press after a meeting of governing body of the IMF, the International Monetary and Financial Committee. Representing 189 members, the body met virtually to discuss the unprecedented challenge posed to the world by COVID-19.

The key to recovery in 2021, she said, is only if the international community succeeds in containing the virus everywhere and prevent liquidity problems from becoming a solvency issue.

"The US is in recession, as is the rest of the advanced economies of the world. And in a big chunk of developed and emerging markets in developing economies. How severe? We are working now on our projections for 2020,” Georgieva said in response to a question.

The new projections are expected in the next few weeks.

Stressing that while containment is the main reason for the economy to stand still and get into a recession, she said containment is very necessary to come out of this period and step in to recovery. "Until the virus is not contained, it would be very difficult to go to the lives we love."

"A key concern about a long-lasting impact of the sudden stop of the world economy is the risk of a wave of bankruptcies and layoffs that not only can undermine the recovery. But can erode the fabric of our societies," the IMF chief said.

To avoid this from happening, many countries have taken far-reaching measures to address the health crisis and to cushion its impact on the economy, both on the monetary and on the fiscal side, she said.

The IMF chief said 81 emergency financing requests, including 50 from lower-income countries, have been received. She said current estimate for the overall financial needs of emerging markets is 2.5 trillion dollars.

"We believe this is on the lower end. We do know that their own reserves and domestic resources will not be sufficient," she added.

The G-20, a day earlier, reported fiscal measures totalling some 5 trillion dollars or over 6 per cent of the global GDP.

Responding to another question, Georgieva said the IMF is projecting recession for 2020.

"We do expect it to be quite deep and we are very much urging countries to step up containment measures aggressively so we can shorten the duration of this period of time when the economy is in standstill," she said.

"And also to apply well-targeted measures, primarily focusing on the health system to absorb that enormous stress that comes from coronavirus. And on people, businesses and the financial system, I am very pleased to say that when we went through countries' responses, that sense of targeted fiscal measures is there and are also very impressive to see the size of these measures," she added.

"Countries are doing all they can on the fiscal and on the monetary front. We have heard from our members' very impressive decisions taken over the last days," the IMF chief said.

"We also want to caution that as we are responding now, we want to make the recession as possibly short and not too deep. We also want to think about what is going to follow the recovery and make sure that we are putting forward measures that can be supportive in this regard," she said. PTI LKJ