Media Lab alum Isabella Loaiza, now a postdoctoral associate at the MIT Sloan School of Management, recently joined other experts on ABC News to discuss the potential impact of AI on employment. 

By Max Zahn

Isabella Loaiza, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies AI and the workforce, co-authored a study examining the shift in jobs and tasks across the U.S. economy between 2016 and 2024.

Rather than dispense with qualities like critical thinking and empathy, workplace technology heightened the need for workers who exhibit those attributes, Loaiza said, citing demand for occupations like early-education teachers, home health aides and therapists.

"It is true we're seeing AI having an impact on white-collar work instead of more blue-collar work," Loaiza said.

But, she added, "We found that jobs that are very human-intensive are probably more robust."