‘It’s an unbundling’: ADP’s Maria Black on how AI is changing the workforce
The payroll processor sees technology disrupting low-value tasks but making human judgment more valuable.
Maria Black, the seventh CEO of ADP, often reflects on the portraits of her predecessors as she contemplates the company's disruptive past. With over 1 million clients and a $110 billion valuation, ADP is uniquely positioned to observe the AI-driven transformation of the workforce. Black emphasizes that AI is not eliminating entire jobs but rather revaluing specific tasks within them.
Low-value tasks, such as list-oriented and task-oriented work, are being automated, while jobs requiring human judgment and complexity are gaining more value. Consequently, employers are willing to pay more for roles that incorporate human complexity and judgment. Black argues that this "unbundling" of tasks presents an optimistic future for the workforce, as it creates opportunities for technology and human collaboration.
However, she cautions that the fear of an "AI job apocalypse" is distracting from more pressing discussions about upskilling, reskilling, and education. Black's company, ADP, has been producing a "Canaries Dashboard" in collaboration with Stanford's Digital Economy Lab, which tracks where AI is and isn't changing the world of work.
Black believes that official BLS data is valuable and valid, even if it differs from ADP's real-time-based data.
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