The industries set to gain or lose the most from AI’s impact

Every week brings new developments in the world of AI, from opportunities to threats, and from seismic growth reports to fears of a stock market implosion.

Indeed, the unprecedented rate of progress makes predictions fiendishly difficult – and liable to date very quickly.

The papers recently reported on a vehicle hire company whose accounts and databases were permanently erased one day by an AI tool acting on its own initiative.

If stories like this become commonplace, or if boardrooms begin to question the value of AI tools, the sector could evolve very differently to current expectations.

A global tsunami of lawsuits is building as copyright holders identify content which has been scraped, stolen and plagiarised by AI firms – often to create low-quality slop.

That’s before we consider the global shortage of processor chips, the lack of energy to power AI data centres, growing consumer opposition and the prospect of punitive new regulations.

In the meantime, AI is reshaping the business world, and by extension the jobs market.

It is eviscerating administrative and clerical roles often taken by women, the entry-level careers relied on by graduates, and the creative industries cherished by the self-employed.

So which industries stand to gain – or lose – from AI’s impact?

The winners

AI might be adept at automating tasks, but it lacks empathy, humour, emotion or lived experience. As such, it’s unlikely to be taking its place in many boardrooms.

It still needs to be supervised by software experts who can reprogram AI engines and identify hallucinations, and by senior managers to evaluate its performance and overall contribution.

AI will never be able to perform human-facing duties like nursing, construction, residential care or teaching in schools. Even robotics has failed to make a significant impact in these sectors.

An algorithm can’t whip up a souffle, change a cambelt, extract a tooth or show people around a new house.

In industries like education, AI’s impact is likely to stop at back-office support – automating processes and ensuring compliance – while humans maintain their existing jobs.

This is where AI works best, whether it’s Copilot parsing intranets for relevant data or new software tools performing scientific calculations at previously unimaginable pace.

Healthcare could benefit from accelerated trial modelling, AI-powered disease detection, real-time record-keeping, forensic image processing and personalised treatment plans.

Similarly, manufacturing might become more profitable if AI supervises just-in-time component orders, production line optimisation and quality assurance.

Utilities firms may be able to improve the provision and reliability of essential services. Ditto farming, where algorithms could transform crop yields and all-important weather predictions.

ISPs, cloud computing and cybersecurity providers will also remain essential service providers, particularly as malicious AI could crack existing passwords and breach firewalls.

The losers

While interpersonal careers are unlikely to be unduly impacted by AI, desk-based roles are being erased at a staggering rate.

Research by Goldman Sachs suggests 25,000 jobs are being lost every month in America alone purely due to AI, with only 9,000 new roles created in response.

The creative industries felt the first shockwave, as writers and editors were replaced almost overnight by generative AI. There’s no point trying to become a freelance writer in 2026.

This quickly fed through to the internet, where traditional advertising-funded Google content models collapsed as soon as search engines stopped encouraging users to click links.

Next in line was the software industry, where unprecedented job cuts and collapsing share prices currently denote a sector facing existential threats from AI coding.

Other lifetime career paths are also evaporating, as the legal, financial and HR sectors see mass-scale AI automation and the abolition of (initially) junior and (subsequently) senior roles.

Finally, there’s the unedifying prospect of a stock market bubble bursting, with AI companies endlessly investing in other AI companies until the music stops.

A stock market crisis would be felt by retailers and consumer goods manufacturers, housebuilders and hospitality brands, and particularly financial services firms.

Of course, AI’s impact may ultimately be smaller than today’s hyperbole suggests, once the stock market-fuelled hysteria dies down.

Yet AI’s success or failure will still affect every industry to some extent, both now and in future.