The White House has released a report stating that nearly half of all US jobs could be affected due to automation through robots and artificial intelligence over the next 20 years.

However, the report claims that the transformation will likely open up new opportunities for individuals and society but at the cost of potentially disrupting the current livelihoods of millions of Americans.

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The White House released the report on Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and the Economy as a follow-up to a previous report titled Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence, which was released in October 2016. The new report talks about the expected impact of AI-driven automation on the economy and suggests strategies that could increase the benefits of AI and mitigate its costs. The challenge for policymakers includes updating, strengthening, and adapting policies to respond to the economic effects of AI.

The report suggests five primary economic effects of AI that policymakers should prepare for, which include: positive contributions to the aggregate productivity growth, changes in the skills demanded by the job market (greater demand for higher-level technical skills), uneven distribution of impact (across sectors, education levels, wage levels, locations and job types), churning of the job market due to old jobs disappearing and new ones being created, and loss of jobs for some workers in the short-run (and possibly longer depending on policy responses).

Additionally, the report suggests three main broad strategies for addressing the impacts of AI-driven automation across the US economy:

1. Investment in and development of AI for its many benefits;
   

2. Education and training of Americans for jobs of the future; and
   

3. Helping workers in the transition and empowering workers to ensure broadly shared growth.
   

Most notably, developments in AI would lead to the creation of important opportunities in cyber defense, improving systems that detect fraudulent transactions and messages.