KUALA LUMPUR: Some 16 per cent of 97 current financial sector roles will be highly affected by the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, Human Resources Minister Steven Sim said.
The roles will likely face displacement or convergence, Sim added.
The roles include customer service officer, direct sales agent, business development manager and credit and lending officer.
"There are 75 per cent medium to low impact roles, and then about 9 per cent emerging roles.
"These are new and not commonly seen roles in the sector currently but will gain more prominence in the near future, such as machine learning specialist, integration architect, cloud engineer, digital transformation and adoption analysts," he said at the National Human Capital Conference & Exhibition (NHCCE) 2024 here today.
Sim added that in the ICT sector, eight per cent of current roles will be highly affected while 30 per cent will have a medium impact.
He said emerging skills in the sector include emerging technology synthesis, automation management, test planning, IT strategy and solution architecture.
Sim also lauded the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to reduce the time for grants application and claims.
He stated that the use of AI technology helps in making recommendations for grant applications and claims sent by employers or training providers based on logic and predetermined conditions.
"The benefits from the use of AI help shorten the grant application processing time at HRD Corp from 154 hours in 2022 involving 239,776 total applications processed, to 19 hours in 2023 with 359,170 total applications processed.
"Another example, Social Security Organisation (Perkeso) issue guarantee letters (GLs) to contributor that need implant for their rehabilitation. Normally it takes three days to issue a GL but thanks to AI, it speed up the process of verifying elegibility of contributors within one hour," he added.
Sim was sharing a sneak preview of an impact report carried out by Talent Corp on the effects of AI, digitalisation and green economy on the Malaysian job market that will be revealed next month.
According to him, the report will involve 10 strategic economic sectors such as information communication and technology, food manufacturing and services, pharmaceutical manufacturing and aerospace.
It also covers on electrical and electronics, wholesale trade and retail, chemicals, medical devices, energy and power, as well as global business services.
"Together these 10 sectors will cover about 4.5 million jobs constituting about 80 per cent of our gross domestic product (GDP).
"The report will tell us what is going to happen to jobs in these sectors in the next three to five years," he added.
Sim said the data-driven and industry-driven report have gone through theoretical research and focus group deliberation with current industrial leaders.
Upon released of the report, he said the ministry will be crafting skills policy to ensure training strategies will address actual gaps in the real world and not mere conjectures of politicians' minds.
"We will work with our partner ministries especially via the National TVET Council presided by the Deputy Prime Minister to ensure skills education and training are designed to fulfil the needs of the real world," he added.
NHCCE is a three-day event runs from Sept 30 to Oct 2 that advocates for a modern and innovative approach towards human capital development.
Carrying the theme "Humanising Artificial Intelligence (AI) for the Future Workforce", the event focuses heavily on how human resource practitioners should harness AI to guide their strategies and shape a more dynamic future workforce.