AI's Impact on Your Career: Which Jobs Are Most Exposed to Generative AI According to Microsoft Research?

Jobs Most Exposed to Generative AI, According to Microsoft

As generative AI tools become more capable, an increasing number of tasks across various occupations are becoming subject to AI automation. To better understand this shift, Microsoft Research analyzed the applicability of AI to real-world tasks by studying over 200,000 anonymized conversations with Microsoft Bing Copilot from January to September 2024.

Key Takeaways

• Language-heavy and information-based roles rank as the most exposed to generative AI, according to Microsoft’s recent research.
• Interpreters, historians, writers, and customer service roles show the highest AI applicability scores.
• Exposure does not equal replacement, and many roles are more likely to be augmented with AI.

How Microsoft Measured AI Exposure

Microsoft assessed AI exposure using three indicators derived from Copilot usage:

• Coverage: How frequently tasks associated with a job appear in Copilot conversations
• Completion: How often Copilot successfully completes those tasks
• Overall AI Applicability Score: A combined measure of how suitable AI is for supporting or performing tasks in a given role

Importantly, a high applicability score does not necessarily imply that a job can be fully automated or displaced. Instead, it shows that a large share of the tasks within a job role can be assisted or successfully completed by generative AI.

Which Jobs Are Most Exposed to AI?

Jobs with high AI applicability scores tend to cover areas where generative AI already performs well, including language processing, research, summarization, and communication.

For interpreters and translators, the coverage score of 0.98 shows that tasks related to these roles appear very frequently in Copilot conversations, while the high completion score of 0.88 indicates that AI can successfully handle many of them. As a result, these roles have the highest overall AI applicability score, at 0.49.

Historians and writing-related roles also appear near the top of the ranking. Similarly, AI chat systems already handle many of the tasks seen in customer-facing roles such as sales representatives, customer service agents, telemarketers, and concierges.

While creative and communication-based jobs dominate the top of the list, technical roles like data scientists, web developers, management analysts, and market research analysts also show moderate to high AI applicability.

Interestingly, across all 40 of the most-exposed jobs, the completion score averages 0.87—showing that AI (in this case, Copilot) is capable of successfully completing most tasks that are assigned to it in conversations.

AI Exposure Doesn’t Mean Job Elimination

Many of the most exposed jobs involve judgment, creativity, or human interaction, where AI functions as a complement rather than a substitute. In practice, generative AI is more likely to increase the productivity of each worker rather than eliminate entire roles.

That said, jobs with repetitive and standardized tasks may see faster transformation as AI tools become more ingrained in daily work.

By contrast, roles that require physical effort and on-the-spot human judgment, including machine operators, repair workers, and caregivers, remain far less exposed to AI, since these tasks are still difficult to automate.