AI agents and robots – our future partners for all work, says McKinsey

AI is expanding the productivity frontier. Realizing its benefits requires new skills and rethinking how people work together with intelligent machines.

Work in the future will be a partnership between people, agents, and robots – all powered by AI. More than half of current US work hours could be automated with today’s technologies. As adoption advances, some human roles will shrink, others expand or shift focus, while new ones emerge – with work increasingly centered on collaboration between people and intelligent machines.

Most human skills will endure, though they will be applied differently. More than 70 percent of the skills sought by employers today are used in both automatable and non- automatable work. This overlap means most skills remain relevant, but how and where they are used will evolve.”

As AI takes on common tasks, people will apply their skills in new contexts. Workers will spend less time preparing documents and ...