Research: The jobs of 4.6 million employees in Türkiye could be affected by artificial intelligence

About 14 percent of the workforce in Türkiye, meaning 4 million 600 thousand employees, works in occupations that could be significantly affected by artificial intelligence. Bloomberg's Türkiye and Sweden economist Selva Baziki reported this finding in a MeseleEkonomi analysis. Baziki stressed that AI's impact on employment does not mean direct job loss.

The research examines occupations through employees' daily tasks and draws on the assessment approach developed by OpenAI. Baziki said they treat the ability to carry out more than half of the tasks in an occupation twice as fast with AI as a high level of exposure: "Did the time I spend on each of five tasks fall by half when I use AI?" she asked, and noted that they first kept a tally.

Baziki said, "It looks like it will affect a segment of around 4 million 600 thousand." Noting that technology can make employees more productive, Baziki said, "Exposure does not actually mean that our jobs are in danger," and said it could speed up our work further and also make us more productive. She explained that some tasks could become fully automated, citing repetitive work such as sorting emails into files; in tasks such as writing and editing, she said AI could make the work easier.

Noting that AI will not affect every occupation at the same level, Baziki recorded that fields such as software and data analysis diverge from jobs requiring physical labor. Reporting that about 60 percent of employees in Türkiye are in medium-skill occupations, Baziki said this structure shields the country from the direct effects of technological transformation but that this is not always an advantage: "So we come out relatively more protected than them, but being protected is not necessarily a good thing."

Evaluating the Turkish Statistical Institute's (TÜİK) research on AI use, Baziki explained that there is a marked difference between young employees and older age groups, and that the usage rate in the oldest age group falls to as low as 3 percent. Stating that this limits productivity gains, Baziki touched on the importance of on-the-job training and of public policy being built in this direction.

Baziki said they have carried out work on the next 30-year period, that the slowdown in population growth and the contraction of the population could put pressure on growth potential, and that productivity gains could ease this pressure. She explained with the example of the internet and fiber optics that Türkiye can benefit from technological advances even if it is not among the countries developing AI. She also added that companies' stock market valuations and the contribution technology makes to the economy should be assessed separately: "Pricing is one thing, pricing in stock markets is another," she said, and said the added value it creates is something different.