Project seeks to predict job profiles of the future

With the aid of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the University of Applied Sciences of the Grisons (FHGR) is working to determine the professional activities that will continue to be carried out by people in Switzerland in the future. For this Innosuisse (Swiss Innovation Agency) project entitled “Future of Work – Future Readiness Prediction System for human-centered shift of work activities”, researchers have teamed up with the two employment agencies Scrambl. and jobchannel.

The project is seeking to clarify which of the current job profile has a genuine future. According to a press release, the World Economic Forum and various consulting firms assume that 30 to 50 percent of the currently available jobs will be subject to radical changes in the near future or will fall victim to automation altogether. It is also important for the team to recognize whether future value creation will take place in Switzerland or in other parts of the world.

The innovative aspect of this project is that job profiles are considered with regard to the work activities they contain. To do this, AI continuously analyzes all job advertisements posted in Switzerland. The combination of different data sources makes it possible to calculate an automation index and an offshoring index for each of the approximately 120,000 unique activities such as “transcribing meeting minutes” or “preparing vegetables”. According to FHGR, “with this fundamental knowledge, companies can optimize their value-added processes and the Swiss population can proactively adapt their career planning”.