Experts warn of AI-driven disruption to jobs in Puerto Rico
As artificial intelligence continues its rapid integration into workplaces, leading to seismic changes in the labor market, concerns about widespread job displacement — particularly in white-collar and knowledge-based fields — are growing with each passing day.
At the Tech Day Puerto Rico 2025 conference held recently in San Juan, experts pointed to a Goldman Sachs study estimating that about one-fourth of current work tasks across all industries could be automated by AI.
Sectors such as office and administrative support, legal services and engineering are among the most exposed, with upward of 40% of tasks in those fields at risk, according to the study. By contrast, jobs in construction, maintenance and repair were cited as among the least affected.
Specific roles identified as vulnerable to this automation wave include customer service representatives, junior computer programmers, legal assistants, stockbrokers, graphic designers and travel agents, according to Jaime Sanabria, a labor attorney, law professor at the University of Puerto Rico and partner at law firm ECIJA.
“In five years, we’ll see jobs that are unimaginable right now due to AI,” Sanabria said. “For example, some experts estimate that in 2030, AI avatar designer jobs will supposedly be among the most in demand.”
Further muddying the predictive waters of the labor market is the fact that AI agents — essentially software tools that perform tasks for users — are doubling in capacity every four months, noted Marcelo Burman, the conference’s chief organizer and one of its main speakers.
Despite the severe disruptions that AI is bringing, Sanabria argued that it shouldn’t deter anyone from seeing the technology with optimism. “Jobs in the future will always require a human component,” he said, citing creativity, empathy and critical thinking as assets that will become even more valuable moving forward.
“Increasingly, people will have to think more like an entrepreneur, in terms of identifying a problem and proposing a solution,” he added, pointing to Puerto Rico’s aging population as a salient example where AI could be used in tandem with human input to address complex challenges.
Human involvement should also be required in instances where AI faces ethical limitations, especially in cases of unfair bias and discrimination by AI algorithms. By way of example, Sanabria highlighted a recent lawsuit against Workday, a tech firm accused of age discrimination in its AI-driven job applicant screening process. In late May, a federal judge in California allowed the case to move forward as a collective action.
“The company could have had someone reviewing the AI algorithm’s decisions and thus potentially save themselves from a lawsuit,” he said.
The labor law expert also stressed the importance of adopting greater flexibility to help navigate such technological disruptions. “The dynamic of the typical 9-to-5 workday, as established in the Industrial Revolution, is changing rapidly, and in many cases, remote work should be embraced,” he said.
Sanabria added that employee-employer relationships are also evolving, with concepts such as “emotional salary” — non financial benefits contributing to employee satisfaction — gaining prominence in the modern workplace.
