Earlier this year, The Economist and The Atlantic published reports arguing that increasing automation, computerisation and artificial intelligence could place at risk half of current jobs in the United States within a decade or two.
Both publications argued that routine-based jobs or jobs that can be solved by smart algorithms are most at risk, whereas those jobs requiring high levels of critical thought and analysis are relatively safe.
Most in the firing line are manufacturing, administrative support, retail, and transportation workers, who will continue to lose workers to automation – as has been the case for decades. However, cashiers, counter clerks, and telemarketers are equally endangered.
This week, the International Business Times published extracts of a conference featuring some of the world’s leading academics, who argued that robots would take around half of all jobs around the globe in the not too distant future as the world enters a “second age of machinery that will have a more profound effect on society than the onset of the industrial resolution”:
“Before the industrial revolution, it was pretty boring from an economist’s point of view, but since the evolution of machines during this time, societies have become more efficient and wealthier,” said Erik Brynjolfsson, director at MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy.
“We are now in the second machine age where robots take on mental, as well as physical work, which does encroach on a vast number of jobs”…
“Robots now substitute jobs, not just complement them from previous times.”
As noted by Business Spectator’s Paul Wallbank earlier this week, job losses are already apparent across previously skilled occupations, and the impact on Australia’s middle class is likely to be profound:
Yesterday, the Associated Press announced it was replacing business journalists with computer programs, following sports reporting where algorithms have delivering match reports for some years…
Many of those fields that cheered the loss of manufacturing are themselves affected by the same computer programs taking the jobs of journalists; any job, trade or profession that is based on regurgitating information already stored on a database can be processed the same way.
For lawyers, accountants, and armies of form processing public servants, computers are already threatening jobs — as with journalism, things are about to get much worse in those fields, as mining workers are finding with automated mine trucks taking high-paid jobs.
Most vulnerable of all could well be managers; when computers can automate financial reports, monitor the workplace and make many day-to-day decisions then there’s little reason for many middle management positions…
The question today… is what jobs are going to replace those white collar jobs that did so well from the 1980s?..
If you are young person seeking a career, you would be well advised to begin looking at these new trends and considering moving into fields that are less likely to be impacted by robotics and automation. Start with the below lists from The Economist and The Atlantic and then hope that there are no further technological breakthroughs that make your chosen vocation redundant!
