The AI revolution is here, rapidly transforming the U.S. job market. New jobs, workforce AI integration and upskilling are all underway. ResumeBuilder.com polled 1,000 business leaders who either use or plan to use ChatGPT. It found that nearly half of their companies have implemented the chatbot. And roughly half of them say ChatGPT has already replaced workers at their companies.
“There is a lot of excitement regarding the use of ChatGPT,” ResumeBuilder.com’s chief career advisor Stacie Haller says in a statement. “Since this new technology is just ramping up in the workplace, workers need to surely be thinking of how it may affect the responsibilities of their current job. The results of this survey show that employers are looking to streamline some job responsibilities using ChatGPT.”
ChatGPT is a conversational AI chatbot developed by Open AI. It’s only one AI tool. AI is a broad field that encompasses various applications aimed at creating intelligent machines capable of performing tasks that traditionally require human intelligence. AI technologies analyze data, learn from user behavior, automate tasks.
Some popular uses of AI: digital assistance like Siri, recommendation systems like AI used by Netflix, fraud detection AI algorithms, autonomous vehicles, facial recognition like Apple’s Face ID, language translation like Google Translate, medical diagnosis AI, chatbots, spam filtering, art tools like Midjourney and AI used with automation and robotics.
Geoffrey Hinton, known as the godfather of AI, warned that AI could eventually surpass humans at virtually everything, raising the risk of mass job loss. According to a report by Goldman Sachs, AI could replace the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs worldwide. At the same time, the World Economic Forum (WEF) predicts that 170 million new jobs could emerge as a result of AI and technological advancements.
AI Upskilling and Reskilling
Others focus less on AI jobs being lost, but the need for workers to learn new skills. Hadi Partovi, Founder and CEO of Code.org, said during a session on Education Meets AI, “When people think about losses due to AI, the risk isn’t people losing their job to AI. “It’s losing their job to somebody else who knows how to use AI. That is going to be a much greater displacement.”
He elaborated, “It’s not that the worker gets replaced by just a robot or a machine in most cases, especially for desk jobs, it’s that some better educated or more modernly educated worker can do that job because he can be twice as productive or three times as productive.”
Sixty percent will have tasks significantly modified by AI; 39% of key job skills in the U.S. are expected to change by 2030; 66% of all tasks in 2030 will still require human skills or a human-technology combination; and 59% of workers will require upskilling or reskilling by 2030. Twenty million U.S. workers are expected to retrain in new careers or AI use in the next three years. AI and machine learning skills are increasingly fundamental, not just for tech workers but for all professionals. Lifelong learning and upskilling are now a top priority for 75% of U.S. employers.
Where AI is now, how fast is it progressing, what scope will AI have
Nvidia is one of the pioneering companies advancing AI. Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO, compared AI’s current phase to the mobile explosion. “We are at the iPhone moment of AI,” saying at this moment AI is mainstream, transformative and accelerating.
How fast is it progressing? “The pace of progress in artificial intelligence (I’m not referring to narrow AI) is incredibly fast. Unless you have direct exposure to groups like Deepmind, you have no idea how fast—it is growing at a pace close to exponential,” said Elon Musk, whose company xAI launched Grok-3 AI chatbot.
How transformative will AI be? British-American computer scientist, tech entrepreneur and founder of DeepLearning AI, Andrew Ng, likened AI’s impact to the advent of electricity, “Just as electricity transformed almost everything 100 years ago, today I actually have a hard time thinking of an industry that I don’t think AI will transform in the next several years.”
Fear of losing job, jobs most vulnerable
According to Pew Research Center, 32% of U.S. workers fear their job will be replaced by AI or similar technology by 2025. Statistics show jobs have already been lost to AI. In May 2023, 3,900 U.S. job losses were directly linked to AI, making it the seventh-largest eliminator of jobs that month. Nearly 14% of U.S. workers report having lost their job to a robot or AI-driven automation. Since 2000, automation has resulted in 1.7 million U.S. manufacturing jobs lost.
Marjorie Cadiz, Kapolei, bank teller, has seen automation’s impact on banking over the past two decades. “I’ve seen our bank tellers work force shrink because over time our customers increasingly relied on bank machines. It’s scary to think how AI will affect bank tellers. We have several loan officers, one for mortgages and others for car and personal loans. I suspect AI will make loan compliance of laws and application process easier. I fear that department will also see reduction. Jobs will be lost not just in our industry but so many others. It’s sad.”
AI is being adopted across various sectors in Hawaii. Yolanda Lau, founding board member, Hawaii Center for AI, participated in a session called “The Future of Work.” She said of the future of AI, “AI will be incorporated into everything and that will accelerate the rate of change. AI will enable computer vision, enable robotics, hopefully solve climate change faster, improve synthetic biology and quantum computing.”
Hawaii Center for AI holds regular workshops as well as an incubator program. Lau said of AI’s opportunities, “AI is creating massive opportunity for anyone. Any one of you can start a business overnight – one that would have probably taken a team of people six months or more to launch, you can do in one weekend. And that’s going to change everything. I frankly wonder if my kids are going to go to college.”
“Our goal is to make computing education more accessible, especially for those who need flexibility to upskill, or may have never seen themselves in this field before,” said Department of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) Chair and Professor Guylaine Poisson. “These programs respond directly to the growing demand for tech-literate professionals in Hawaiʻi and beyond.”
In state government, Ed Sniffen of the Hawai‘i Department of Transportation, describes the use of massive amounts of data to improve traffic. “We had to transition from being reactive to being proactive, but we can’t be proactive with all that data, no matter how many people we hire. So, we use AI as a filter, making sure we can get all that data into an AI system where we can consume it and make decisions. We had to train our AI platforms to ensure they helped us act before an incident or accident, to prevent it.” To students, Sniffen said “they should learn to use AI “because when you come to the workforce, I’m going to expect that you’d be using that tool for us as well.”
Chase Conching, principal and creative director of Library Creative, a Honolulu aio Digital company, participated in a Hawaii Business Magazine discussion on AI. At Library Creative, they’ve been using AI tools, tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion to kickstart their creative process. Library Creative is a brand and design agency.
“By automating tasks, we’re able to focus on things that are of higher value to us while building things for our clients. We are helping to build things like customer service chatbots and data projects – first and foremost doing things responsibly, equitably and ethically. That includes things like data privacy for our financial or healthcare clients and making sure we have humans on both ends who double check the responses that these AI language models are producing,” Conching said.
Indeed job recruiters listed in May 2025, 129 AI jobs in Hawaii. Some positions listed were software engineer (AI focus), engagement manager, instructor AI Professional Program, AI engineer, data scientist. Salaries ranged from $68K-160K.
Nationally, LinkedIn looked at millions of jobs based on user information from 2022 to 2025 and found the top two jobs were artificial intelligence engineer and artificial intelligence consultation.
Top AI Jobs
TRG Datacenters ranked AI-related job positions based on their demand and attractiveness, using search interest, job openings and average salaries as key metrics. It found the top 10 hottest AI jobs of 2025.
Machine Learning Engineer has the highest average annual salary of $161,800. The position has 16,000 job openings and draws 44,000 monthly searches.
Computer Vision Engineer yields an average annual salary of $127,500, it has 2,100 monthly searches. It leads the job market with the most job openings at 36,000.
Robotics Engineer (AI Focus) offers an average annual salary of $119,100. The analysts describe the job as having incredible popularity, with54,600 monthly searches—more than any other AI role. According to the analysts, this position is vital in building automated systems that power industries like manufacturing and logistics.
Deep Learning Specialist has 19,000 job openings and an average salary of $153,000. It has a total of 1,043 monthly searches, this role stands as one of the highest-paying AI positions.
Natural Language Processing (NLP Engineer) has 6,000 job openings and a competitive average annual salary of $156,000. Earning a total of 1,400 monthly searches, this position shows strong market demand.
AI Research Engineer offers an average annual salary of $122,000 and 2,000 job openings.With only 680 monthly searches, the analysts cite that, although smaller in scale, this role is critical for driving the future of AI, focusing on cutting-edge advancements that shape the industry.
Data Scientist (AI Applications) has 10,700 monthly searches. With 5,000 openings and a $123,100 average annual salary, analysts describe this versatile role as continuing to play a crucial part in helping companies make data-driven decisions across a variety of sectors.
Generative AI Engineer has 210 monthly searches. The analysts say it’s a rapidly emerging field. They add that, despite its niche focus, this role commands a strong average annual salary of $150,000 and has 3,000 openings.
AI Product Manager falls has 6,900 monthly searches. The analysts evaluate it as having both technical knowledge and strategic vision to bring AI tools to market. It has 1,000 job openings, an average annual salary of $141,000.
Cloud AI Engineer rounds out the top ten with 890 monthly searches, 5,000 openings and an average salary of $128,000.
AI’s growing pains in the workforce
Cadiz’ concern over AI goes beyond her own potential job loss and possible changes to the banking industry. “I’m also worried about our Filipino community. Many of us work in the service industry as customer service reps, cashiers, sales or in jobs as office administrators, accounting clerks for example. These are all projected to be dramatically hit by the AI revolution. I’m also worried about newly graduated college students getting jobs. That’s already a challenge. Reports say many entry-level white-collar jobs typically occupied by fresh graduates will be replaced by AI,” Cadiz said.
Socorro Painter, Livermore, California, retired chemist, also is worried that many people will lose their jobs when AI becomes fully developed. She admits that AI can be efficient. “In my research for my blog, AI sometimes gives a more comprehensive response than the other choices.” Painter also recognizes the inevitability of AI and that preparation is needed. “We need to train more workers who will be able to work with artificial intelligence. They have to be taught at a younger age so they will be able to deal with the changes going on in the world.”
Billions in investments pouring into AI
With billions of dollars being poured into AI development most economists and industry leaders believe there’s no turning back from AI. Google, Meta, Microsoft are only some of the biggest companies investing heavily in AI. Global private AI investment is up reaching a record high of 44.5% growth in 2024 at $252.3 billion. U.S. private AI investment hit $109.1 billion in 2024.
Possible UBI and shorter work week
Presidential candidate Andrew Yang first popularized the idea of the need for a Universal Basic Income (UBI) – regular, unconditional cash payments to all citizens similar to COVID-19 stimulus checks, but ongoing – to deal with the inevitable massive job losses from AI, automation and robotics. At the time, Musk backed Yang’s idea. Musk suggested that providing UBI will be necessary to bridge the gap as traditional jobs become obsolete.
Since then, other leaders have spoken in favor of UBI to enable the flow of money into an economy which could otherwise suffer a meltdown. Altman, CEO of OpenAI, also believes in the necessity of UBI as automation and AI progress. Both Musk and Altman emphasize the importance of financial stability in an AI-dominated world.
A potential change to labor in the future with AI in full swing is the shortening of the work week. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates weighed in on a possible three-day work week, “If you zoom out, the purpose of life is not just to do jobs. So, if you eventually get a society where you only have to work three days a week or something, that’s probably OK if the machines can make all the food and the stuff and we don’t have to work as hard.”
Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase predicts people might work 3 ½ days a week due to advancements in technology. He says AI will eliminate jobs, but it will also enhance productivity and efficiency, potentially improving work-life balance.
Painter says she supports both UBI and a shorter work week. “I can see how workers will be able to work a three-day work week in the future. I think it is fair if workers’ output produces more or about the same in less time.” On UBI, “I will support UBI if that will help keep the flow of the economy. I hope we don’t have to resort to that,” Painter adds.
Cadiz is skeptical about both UBI and a possible shorter work week because of AI. “Look at the people coming up with these scenarios, people pushing AI on us. It looks like propaganda so that Americans will support AI. It sounds nice to have both UBI and to work less days should AI allow for it. But I haven’t seen our market system – our economic culture of incessant profit-grabbing — to show any such signs of altruism, even if they are beneficial for society. If anything, with AI’s efficiency, employers will be demanding more from workers. If anything, our government should be safeguarding us against the potential dangers and exploitation of AI. We should be looking into new workers’ rights as AI advances. We shouldn’t be so gullible into thinking of all the benefits of AI without the potential harm.
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