"Even if artificial intelligence (AI) advances, jobs will not decrease. AI will not replace tasks that humans can perform, but will instead take over tasks that humans cannot do."
Dona Sarkar, head of AI & Copilot deployment at Microsoft (MS), noted on the 27th at the country's largest tech conference, the SMARTCLOUD SHOW 2025, held at the Westin Josun Hotel in Jung-gu, Seoul, that AI and the future were the themes of the conference. Sarkar is responsible for helping corporations and developers worldwide utilize the company's AI agent Copilot and AI technology.
Sarkar emphasized that the common perception that AI will replace human jobs is mistaken. She said, "Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, stated that AI currently handles 30-50% of tasks performed by humans, but this may have been work that AI was already doing 20 years ago," and added, "Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, also mentioned that about 50% of administrative job positions among new hires next year will disappear, but AI cannot completely replace humans. This is because people prefer to engage in conversations with actual humans rather than machines."
She also remarked, "Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, said that in the age of AI, it will be possible to perform more creative and meaningful work thanks to AI, and that jobs will not decrease but rather increase," adding that "the advancement of AI can actually lead to more job creation."
Sarkar claimed, for example, that the advancement of AI will not reduce job opportunities for developers but rather increase them. She stated, "When MS created 'Visual Basic,' a programming language and development environment tool accessible even to beginners in 1991, business professionals expected that they would make applications themselves, and thus thought developers' jobs would diminish. However, most businesses actually created webpages and developed applications through developers, which resulted in an increase in developer jobs."
Sarkar stated, "Concerns have grown that by 2025, due to the development of generative AI, AI will eliminate the jobs of all developers, but in reality, more developer jobs are emerging than before," further noting that "while there may be jobs that disappear in automated areas that can replace human tasks, as AI evolves, the need for reinforcement learning to enhance AI tools has increased, which is leading to a rise in these work-based developer positions."
Finally, Sarkar emphasized the importance of considering return on investment (ROI) when utilizing AI agents and advised using them for tasks that are difficult for humans. She said, "It is crucial to first consider the utility that can be gained from using AI agents and to utilize various AI agents according to specific objectives," adding that "leveraging AI for tasks that humans cannot accomplish will enhance ROI."