Artificial intelligence is beginning to have an effect on employment in Israel, but for now, it is much smaller than anticipated, a study released on Sunday shows.
Some 28% of Israeli businesses used AI over the past six months, according to a survey by the country’s Central Bureau of Statistics, similar to the European Union for the same period but lower than Germany’s rate of 44%.
The use of AI in Israel is three times higher in knowledge-intensive industries such as high-tech compared to traditional sectors such as manufacturing and trade, the survey found.
Sixty percent of the businesses that reported using AI said that it does tasks previously performed by humans, including 44% that are “routine and technical only,” and 16% that “requires thinking.”
Some 9% of Israeli businesses using AI said the medium had an impact on the size of their workforce at a rate much lower than previous estimates. Five percent said the use of AI has led to a decrease in recruitment, while the remaining 4% said that they have reduced the number of their existing employees due to the technology.
“People are losing jobs because of AI, but at this point, it is not as much as what was estimated before,” Gilad Be’ery of the Israel Democracy Institute, who performed an analysis on the survey, told JNS on Sunday. “You had all these studies flying around that 50% of the workforce would be laid off, and while we see that the employment effect is there, it’s much lower at this point than what was said in the past.”
The June survey, which sampled 1,200 businesses in Israel, did not cite a margin of error.
