Smart machines are coming, and they’re after more than just manufacturing jobs.

The assumption about artificial intelligence and automation has been that they’ll kill the jobs of workers who perform mostly routine tasks, such as farm workers, truck drivers and fast-food employees.

But a new analysis on AI and labor from the Brookings Institution has found that high-wage, white-collar jobs — market research analysts, financial advisers, computer programmers, among many others — are likely to be impacted the most by artificial intelligence.

The report builds on a study by Stanford Ph.D student Michael Webb, who tracked the sharp rise in patents related to AI in recent years.

Webb developed an algorithm that searched for thousands of two-word phrases such as “predict performance” or “detect cancer” that are found in AI patents and also in regional job descriptions. His objective was to gauge the overlap between the current tasks workers perform and the capabilities of artificial intelligence.

AI and machine learning are rapidly advancing fields of technology aimed at programming machines to process and learn from massive amounts of data, and then make intelligent decisions and predictions based on the information.

Despite its dire warnings for parts of the U.S., the Brookings report found that, compared to other cities, the San Antonio metro area for now is fairly insulated from potential AI-induced job loss. AI programs are able to perform a smaller share of the tasks workers in San Antonio complete each day compared to other metro areas.

The areas most susceptible to AI include the West Coast high-tech hubs of San Jose and Seattle as well as manufacturing centers such as Detroit and farming communities like Bakersfield, Calif.

The technology is steadily becoming a standard part of many industries, including health care and manufacturing. AI is already providing investment advice and trading stocks and bonds.

One example is the AIEQ, an AI-powered exchange-traded fund that uses IBM Watson technology to analyze the performance of 6,000 U.S. companies each day. The computer-managed fund uses AI to understand the economy and build predictive models that work nonstop.

The AIEQ fund has had total returns of about 21 percent since its inception in October 2017. By comparison, the S&P Total Return Index rose almost 27 percent in that same time period.

But labor experts and local workers largely dismissed the idea an AI could replace them altogether. They said artificial intelligence instead could free workers to perform fewer rote tasks.

“I used to be afraid (AI) would take away a lot of roles of advisors, but what I’ve found is that some of the most important roles a financial advisor can play is behavioral counseling, making sure people do the right things at the right time for the right reasons,” said Neil Vannoy, a financial planner and president of the Vannoy Advisory Group, located downtown.

“An algorithm or a computer program isn’t going to talk a client off the ledge when they’re about to panic and sell” if stock prices fall, Vannoy said. “I’ve had to tell clients, ‘We’ve planned for this. I don’t know when or how, but things will get back to normal.’”

The Brookings study found that nearly every job will be affected to some degree by AI — 740 of the 769 occupations studied include a task susceptible to AI.

And while the authors noted they weren’t determining whether AI will hurt or help workers, the report found that about one-fifth of the U.S. workforce will be highly affected by AI — for better or worse.

“One scenario is that these technologies allow those most-involved workers to do more and to become even more productive, and maybe to see pay increases in some cases,” said Mark Muro, a Brookings senior fellow and one of the authors of the report. But he added, “It strains credulity to think corporations won’t in same cases lay people off.”

The study acknowledges that robotics and software will largely supplant workers in fields such as textiles and car-making. But the analysis also includes jobs previously thought to be immune from artificial intelligence.

A professional firm, such as a physician’s practice, may use AI to manage the pace of supply orders and improve company-wide efficiency — potentially cutting into an office manager’s job. And AI may be able to complete analytic and predictive tasks that a market research analyst performs, or handle the supervisory duties of a sales manager.

Previously, robots and software were considered to be the main drivers of potential technology-related job loss — not AI.

In San Antonio, a majority of low- and middle- income jobs are susceptible to automation from robots and software: food prep workers, restaurant cooks, welders, dental assistants, for example. But Muro said the new analysis “confirms a suspicion many of us have had that AI is going to be a particularly white-collar affair.”

Brookings performed the early analysis of AI and the workforce to help cities and states rethink future workforce development. The report, Muro said, “adds urgency that all segments of the labor market are going to be affected by automation.”

“We need to be thinking about specifically what are skills that will enable resiliency? What are skills that will enable workers to not just use these technologies, but to add something that an employer will pay for?” he said.

It’s likely the future will play out in the middle, between the current status quo and AI and automation making human labor obsolete.

Expanding artificial intelligence will almost certainly create a wave of numerous new jobs and careers, said Dhireesha Kudithpudi, a computer science professor at UTSA and director of the AI Consortium at the school.

Kudithpudi said it’s too early to panic about AI affecting the workforce, and that the technology today is far behind humans in the workplace.

“I think the part we are missing with any new technology is that there is also an opportunity to create a lot of new positions,” Kudithpudi said. She noted that nearly every company will need employees with expertise in artificial intelligence and machine learning, and others with expertise in data analytics.

“Instead of being paranoid, especially talking about white-collar jobs, people have to be ready to upskill or re-skill, so that they’re ready for it rather than being on the sidelines, because this is one technology that is going to cause disruption in almost any field you can think of,” she said.

Vannoy, the financial advisor, said he sees AI ultimately becoming a boon for workers instead of a jobs-killer.

“One of best things AI can do is take over mundane tasks, like portfolio re-balancing or portfolio monitoring, and allow financial advisors more time to talk with clients about the emotional side, the human side — get to know them better so that my advice would be better,” Vannoy said.

Muro said it will be important to prioritize worker retraining programs and alter current workforce development strategies.

“I do think the sooner we learn,” Muro said of AI’s workforce impact, “the faster we can begin improving and changing a workforce system that doesn’t work very well at this point.”

diego.mendoza-moyers@express-news.net