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A new report from the International Monetary Fund suggests that artificial intelligence is already beginning to shape the global labor market.

Earlier this week, the IMF, a global economic organization, warned that 40 percent of jobs could be affected by AI, with some workers becoming more efficient and others seeing their jobs eliminated. That number jumps to 60 percent for advanced economies such as the US. In advanced economies, about half the time, jobs will be enhanced by AI, allowing workers to execute their tasks more efficiently. In other cases, AI will replace the work of humans, allowing employers to reduce headcount.

The report warns that AI could exacerbate income inequality, as skilled workers leverage AI to become more productive, with others falling behind. Older workers may be particularly vulnerable in this new environment, while women, highly educated workers, and younger people generally stand to benefit.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called for guardrails on AI and reining in the unchecked power of Big Tech companies. "This technology has enormous potential for sustainable development - but the International Monetary Fund has just warned that it is very likely to worsen inequality," he said.

For employers, this could lead to highly skilled workers commanding higher wages and becoming more in demand. Firms that have the resources to leverage AI, the report notes, could have an advantage over smaller competitors.

Many tech leaders--particularly those with a stake in the development of AI--have argued that with their current capabilities, AI systems are more suited to making workers more productive or will create new categories for jobs.

OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman, for example, argued at Davos that AI has not yet advanced to the level of destroying jobs. "It will change the world much less than we all think and it will change jobs much less than we all think," he said. He did, however, say that AI was already making people more productive.

The report notes that many of these technologies are so new that the exact impacts can be difficult to predict, but "AI will ripple through economies in complex ways," according to an IMF blog post about the report. "What we can say with some confidence is that we will need to come up with a set of policies to safely leverage the vast potential of AI for the benefit of humanity."