Metro Detroit has exposure rates comparable to other Midwestern big cities. 

Chicago area counties will also see between 35% and 38% exposure. Cuyahoga County in Ohio, home to Cleveland, will see 35% exposure; Columbus’ Franklin County, 36%; Dane County in Wisconsin, which houses Madison and the University of Wisconsin, will see 38% exposure.

Researchers found that the greater the education level or pay for an occupation, the greater its exposure to generative AI tools will be. According to 2023 U.S. Census data, Washtenaw and Oakland counties topped the list of the most educated counties in Michigan.

“Generative AI is especially well suited to the cognitive tasks of white collar knowledge work — think coders, writers, financial analysts, engineers, and lawyers,” the Brookings Metro report states.

Across Michigan, Cass County in Southwest Michigan would see the lowest impact of AI on jobs, with just 22% exposure. Kent County, home to Grand Rapids, will see around 33% exposure to generative AI.

Michigan falls in the middle of the 50 states and the District of Columbia when it comes to generative AI exposure. This can be attributed to the balance between the state’s information-oriented metro areas and lower exposure across its agriculture- and manufacturing-dependent counties.

Approximately 85% of workers can see generative artificial intelligence impacting some part of their jobs. More than 30% of those workers could see at least 50% of their occupational tasks affected by the growing technology, according to the Brookings report.

“It would be hard-pressed for us to mention an industry or client that is not being disrupted or leveraging AI in some capacity,” said John Bourbeau, president for Right Management Great Lakes, an outplacement and HR consulting firm headquartered in Southfield.

He said the firm advises workers to be intentional about evolving their skills and capabilities to the ever-changing markets. That includes becoming more knowledgeable about AI and understanding how AI may or may not impact their roles.

AI is best at performing cognitive, nonroutine tasks such as conducting research, writing code, creating marketing content and more, which are typically administered by better-educated, better-paid office workers. These roles are also often dominated by female-staffed call centers, customer service lines and HR teams, the report notes.

“As a result, the more involved workers are in upscale office or information-based work, the more involved they will be with AI,” the Brookings report says. “(AI) is currently not equipped to handle the manual work of manufacturing, the skilled trades, construction, and many in-person service industries.”

Bourbeau said Right Management Great Lakes also believes that corporations “ultimately have a responsibility to provide training and a runway for people to upskill and reskill if that’s a viable option.”

As technology advances and permeates industries, the demand for AI-related skills is increasing; opening the door for additional career opportunities.

Jeff Hauser, chief operating officer of Right Management Great Lakes, said there’s also the potential for AI to create additional jobs. A study by McKinsey Global Institute estimates that as early as 2030, AI could contribute to the creation of 20 million-50 million jobs globally.

“While there will be between 90 (million) and 100 million jobs displaced globally by AI, between now and 2030, there’ll be 170 million jobs created. And so we think there’s a real net positive for AI,” Hauser said. That’s as long as people approach AI positively, and use it to enhance their expertise, not replace it.

Because society is in a “pre-regulatory” moment of AI, it’s difficult to gauge specifically how roles will be impacted, and there is not yet any standard for acting as a high-road employer-deployer in the context of generative AI, an October Brookings Institution report states.

“On one hand, generative AI has the potential to complement millions of workers’ skills, enabling them to be more productive, creative, informed, efficient, and accurate,” the report states. “On the other hand, employers may choose to automate some, or even all, of their employees’ work, leading to possible job losses and weakened demand for previously sought-after skills.”

However, humans do have skills that are durable, despite the disruption of AI, Hauser said. 

Interpersonal skills, intrapersonal self-management skills and human-to-human communication aren’t replicable by the technology. And, ideally, AI will allow more time for creative and strategical thinking, he said, that was time normally spent on mundane tasks.