Oxford
researchers say that 45 percent of America’s occupations will be automated
within the next 20 years
'Rapid advances in technology have
long represented a serious potential
threat to many jobs ordinarily performed by people. A recent report from the Oxford Martin School’s Programme on the Impacts of
Future Technology attempts to quantify the extent of that threat. It concludes that 45
percent of American jobs are at high risk of being taken by computers within
the next two decades. The authors believe this takeover will happen in two
stages. First, computers will start replacing people in especially vulnerable
fields like transportation/logistics, production labor, and administrative support.
Jobs in services, sales, and
construction may also be lost in this first stage. Then, the rate of
replacement will slow down due to bottlenecks in harder-to-automate fields such
engineering. This “technological plateau” will be followed by a second wave of
computerization, dependent upon the development of good artificial
intelligence. This could next put jobs in management, science and engineering,
and the arts at risk.
These results were calculated with a
common statistical modeling method. More than 700 jobs on O*Net, an online career network, were considered, as well
as the skills and education required for each. These features were weighted
according to how automatable they were, and according to the engineering
obstacles currently preventing computerization.
'Our findings thus imply that as
technology races ahead, low-skill workers will reallocate to tasks that are
non-susceptible to computerization — tasks that required creative and social
intelligence. For workers to win the race,
however, they will have to acquire creative and social skills.'
Really?
Spoken
like true academics and the vision of bat. My new book which will be out early
next year, has a number of chapters on just this issue. Those automation
systems, industrial and service robots and ubiquitous computerization will cull
90 percent of blue collar jobs in under a decade. And eventually march into
white collar, more complex care, and higher thinking roles over the following decade.
For example, here's some jobs that will not exist after 2025.
- Domestic robot maintenance.
- Domestic instant production technology maintenance fitters.
- Fast food servers.
- Office administrators.
- DJs.
- Taxi drivers.
- Pilots.
- Dog walkers.
- Painters and Decorators.
- Trawler Fishermen.
Basically, tasks that can be simply repeated, robots and smart systems will undertake them.
But it
is not all doom and gloom, and for many quite good:
10s of
millions of new, unheard of jobs will be invented over the next 20 years. Many
of the jobs created will not even look as though people are working, but having
fun, adventure and theatrics.
But more, the majority of the new fangled jobs will be further and further up the food value food chain, meaning better pay
and conditions. And further, these new jobs will be in industries most have no idea of now, such as Consumer Tourist Space Travel Agent, Deep Ocean Marine Farmer, F1 Flying Car Grand Prix Racing Drivers; Life Extension Therapists, Solar Energy Engineers, Nanomanufacturing Design Engineers, Cognitive Enhancement Clinicians, and countless more!... It is gonna be existing even way before the Singularity is here!
The core issue, as you can see, is our kids, today's mid career professionals and blue collar craftsman must re-imagine their work life-cycle. Innovation, Entrepreneurism, and Enterprise must shoot up the agenda!
Keep in
reading, I will be rolling out snippets of my new book toward the end of the year.
