Robots and automation have been present for a significant amount of time and they have aided humans to complete a set of tasks by reducing effort and time. As per CNBC a recent study has found that 670,000 jobs were lost to robots from 1990 to 2007. A widely cited 2013 study found that nearly half of the jobs in the US would be automated in the next 20 years. The figures seem to be scary, and it is becoming quite a concern and so that leads us to the question which jobs would be in danger. The occupations that comprise of tasks that are repetitive and predictable in transportation, logistics and administrative support are at risk. Let’s consider an industry of beverage bottling and packaging. Before the advent of robots and AI everything from filling the beverage into a bottle, closing, and sealing the lid, labelling the bottle, aggregating bottles into a box and then sealing and packaging the box for transportation was done manually. Now, all the steps can be performed by a robot. Only a supervisor may be required to keep an eye on the process and fix an issue from time to time, human intervention is required when loading the boxes into the truck and to drive the truck to the delivery center. So, automation in this bottling factory essentially eliminates the need for human workers by more than 50 %. In the coming days when self-driving technology is perfected. There will be another job lost.
Another job sector that can be considered is the customer service. Customer service jobs were outsourced to countries like India where labour is cheaper. This helped many people get jobs where pay wasn’t stellar by any means but kept a family going. Now we have chat bots which fall into the category of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and these chat bots can solve the most basic queries which was previously only possible to do by a human being at the other end of the telephone. So, a smaller number of customer service associates are required as the workload is distributed between bots and humans. At present chat bots cannot fully do replace the call center worker as it can only solve the most basic enquiries. But with further advancement replacing workers completely is highly likely.
AI and automation will not be easily able to replace the higher skilled labor this means skilled labor will continue to reap the benefits higher pay and demand, but the low skilled labor will be severely affected as their jobs will not be valued as much or be completely replaced. Failure to upskill will leave them unemployed. This is a serious issue as there are many middle aged to aged people who are in different types of unskilled jobs out of necessity, or a particular condition and it will not be possible for them to pickup a new programming language and excel at it. IT, advanced networking, customer service would continue to thrive as these cannot be automated easily and you wouldn’t want your child to be left with a robot nanny.
references:
https://usflearn.instructure.com/courses/1721164/assignments/12900783
1Max Tegmark, Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, Alfred A. Knopf, 2017.2“Will Robots Really Steal Our Jobs? An International Analysis of the Potential Long Term Impact of Automation,” PwC, 2018 https://www.pwc.com/hu/hu/kiadvanyok/assets/pdf/impact_of_automation_on_jobs.pdf (February 16, 2020).