Will a Robot Take Your Job?
There is a vigorous debate about the effects of automation on jobs. Everyone agrees that some jobs will be lost to automation and, in turn, some jobs will be created by it. The pivotal question is how all of that nets out.
Often lost in the abstract debate is the question of exactly which jobs are likely to be automated. I have created a test to try to capture just that.
The idea is simple: Some things are quite easy for computers and robots to do, and other things are quite hard. Jobs in the “safe” category have lots of things about them that are hard for machines to do.
The good news is that it doesn’t take very many hard things to make a job, practically speaking, impervious to automation, at least in this century. While jobs like “hostage negotiator” are clearly better done by people than machines, even jobs that look like good candidates for automation have difficulties. In theory, a robot should be able to clean the windows on my home, in practice this isn’t likely to happen for quite a long time.
The test is ten questions, and each one can be scored from 0 to 10. For each one, I give examples of some jobs at 0, 5, and 10. My examples are meant to show each extreme, and a midpoint. You should not just score with those three points. Use 7’s and 2’s and 9’s.
When you are done, the total is tallied. The closer it is to zero, the less likely you are to get a surprise announcement from the boss one day. The closer you get to 100, well, if you start to feel something breathing down your back, then that may be the cooling fan in the robot who is about to take your job.
The goal is not to find a job near a zero. Anything below a 70 is probably safe long enough for you to have a long illustrious career. There are obvious “100” jobs. The person who takes your order at a fast food restaurant is probably pretty close.
Take the test here. We plan to calibrate and refine it, then publish a research report about the results. If you would like to be kept in the loop about that, be sure to add your email address.
Digital Marketing Expert | Host & Producer of the IEBN Podcast ? iebn.org
1 年the link to the test is broken, any idea where to find that test? I'm listening to the book on audible and the author refers to byronreese.com/jobs that link is also broken
President at Futura Automation, LLC
5 年In the short run (1-5 years) some jobs will be lost to automation, as they have the past 60+ years and those job losses absorbed by alternate work.? However, over time, the pace of job displacement will accelerate, as it has since the 1960s and the advent of commercial computers and robots.? ? To this point in time, job loss has been masked by (blamed on) outsourcing to low cost countries / regions.? Japan in the 60s and 70s took the heat.? China in the 90s and 00s and now India, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, etc.? Eventually the world will run out of cheap labor and the role of automation in taking over work will be fully exposed.? The macro and aggregate increases in labor costs as cheap labor evaporates (workers move up the global income scale) will improve even further the ROI on automation even as the cost of automation components (robots) decreases? following Moore's Law and applications become better understood / are subjected to advancements in AI.? The result is a parabolic curve of job loss / automation replacement.? Sometime in the next 100 years, all manufacturing jobs, including designing and building robots themselves, and most service jobs will be replaced by automation / robots.? It may be a bit like boiling frogs.
Chief of Staff at Institute for Law & AI
6 年Nice!