Artificial intelligence is poised to have a major impact on the workforce, with 4 of 5 executives saying it will lead to changed employee roles and skills.

IBM released its Institute for Business Value Research Insights. The company says that “AI won’t replace people—but people who use AI will replace people who don’t.”

AI and automation are creating a new division of labor between humans and machines. The World Economic Forum (WEF) predicts this evolution will disrupt 85 million jobs globally between 2020 and 2025—and create 97 million new job roles. This radical shift is ushering in a new age. We call it the age of the augmented workforce—an era when human-machine partnerships boost productivity and deliver exponential business value.

IBM says the WEF’s research shows that some 44% of worker skills will be disrupted over the next five years, up 9% from the organization’s last five-year projections.

Executives in our survey estimate that 40% of their workforce will need to reskill due to implementing AI and automation over the next three years. That translates to 1.4 billion of the 3.4 billion people in the global workforce, according to World Bank statistics.

What sort of reskilling? On average, 87% of executives expect job roles to be augmented, rather than replaced, by generative AI. That figure is closer to three-quarters in marketing (73%) and customer service (77%)—and more than 90% in procurement (97%), risk and compliance (93%), and finance (93%). 6 Intriguingly, STEM skills are plummeting in importance, dropping from the top spot in 2016 to 12th place in 2023. As the need for technical acumen has increased more broadly, many leaders may now see these skills as table stakes.

Looking to the future, executives are more focused on developing people skills, with time management and prioritization, collaboration, and communications topping the list.

AI has sparked fears across industries that the technology will take people’s jobs. IBM and WEF’s research is at least encouraging that AI may be poised to co-exist alongside human workers, albeit with some reskilling on the part of humans.