Artificial intelligence will be capable of doing the work equivalent of nearly 400 million of today’s jobs by 2050.

But global trends such as the ageing population and climate change will drive the creation of an even greater number of new jobs.

That is the view of Alok Aggarwal, an AI expert, author, entrepreneur, data scientist, and founder of Scry AI, who visited Bermuda last week.

Dr Aggarwal was here with principals of Portage, an AI-led solutions company that Scry AI partners with, and which seeks to give clients practical benefits from the technology.

The Portage delegation, which met with government officials, insurers, and technology partners, included co-founders Greg Framke, chief executive officer, and John Hele, executive chairman and a Bermuda resident, as well as manager Lyndsey Gibbons-Neff, who leads business development, and Dr Aggarwal.

Their discussions with government officials focused mainly on the likely impact of AI on Bermuda’s flagship re/insurance industry, the group said.

Portage has offices in New York and London and is considering establishing a presence in Bermuda. The company’s leaders have deep financial services experience. Mr Hele is a former group chief financial officer of MetLife, and president of Resolution Life, while Mr Framke served as chief operating officer of E*Trade and chief transformation officer of Resolution Life.

As the author of The Fourth Industrial Revolution and 100 Years of AI, Dr Aggarwal has conducted years of research into the potential impact of the technology. He is keen to stress that the story is about much more than machines taking jobs.

“Job losses will occur, but because it won’t be AI taking jobs away, it will be people who are using AI well, who will be 1.5 or two times more productive, and therefore you need fewer others,” Dr Aggarwal said.

“So others will have to become more creative, and become subject matter experts. That will happen gradually over the next 15 to 25 years.

“What we estimated in the book was that by 2050, we expect about 400 million job losses due to AI and robotics. That's a lot. But we have time to to catch up and to train the next generation.”

He cautions that this gradual trend should be viewed from a broader perspective, as there will be other “tectonic shifts” impacting humanity at the same time, such as the ageing population leading to fewer people of working age and more retirees.

Dr Aggarwal cited research that projects the world’s population will climb from about eight billion today to about ten billion in 2050, before declining birth rates in many countries fall below the rate of 2.1 children per woman required for a stable population.

Some countries are already adapting. In China, mass automation in the car industry is driving productivity. In Italy, the government approved a plan to issue nearly 500,000 new work visas for non-European Union nationals between 2026 and 2028 to fight severe labour shortages.

Offsetting the trend of AI job elimination will be job growth in other areas, Dr Aggarwal’s research indicates.

For example, as outlined in his book, the ageing population means about 75 million more healthcare workers will be needed by 2050; about 135 million new jobs are likely to be created in data science, AI and automation as the technology becomes increasingly integrated; battling climate change could generate as many as 360 million jobs around the world; emerging economies upgrading their infrastructure could create about 725 million jobs; new — as yet unknown — industries will create new jobs.

The global net effect, Dr Aggarwal finds, is more jobs being created than lost by 2050, and a deepening labour shortage.

With regard to its business offerings, Portage sees great opportunities for its AI-powered tools in insurance, an industry in which much complex work is still done manually, using spreadsheets and often data re-entry.

Mr Framke said that using technology to improve open market and delegated business pricing submission and bordereaux data management had potential to improve the expense ration — however he saw the bigger potential of AI elsewhere.

“I think the real payoff is in data,” Mr Framke said, adding that insurers had huge amounts of data and AI could enable them to gain actionable insights from it.

Many insurers have invested heavily in AI with little to show for it. A 2025 study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology found 95 per cent of enterprise AI pilots delivered no measurable return on investment in the industry.

Mr Framke is aware of the growing focus on achieving tangible gains from the technology. Many managers are balking at the fast-accumulating costs of tokens, units measuring AI usage.

Portage tries to align with the return on investment focus by not asking for payment until the client sees positive results, an approach the company started three years ago, partly to help overcome scepticism of the technology’s effectiveness.

It’s a value-based, rather than usage-based, approach.

“We want to do something that’s meaningful for the client, not just a proof of concept — we want to do something that achieves a value,” Mr Framke said. “We'll do it on our dime. If we don't deliver value, then we’ll go away.”

Dr Aggarwal emphasised that although the impact of AI on labour needs would be substantial over time, it would also be gradual and some companies had acted too fast.

“Some companies have fired people and have had to hire back 80 per cent of them,” Dr Aggarwal said. “It’s because many companies got swept away with the hype, and they didn't realise the whole notion of subject matter expertise and tribal knowledge.”

For now, at least, the human element remains essential.