Utopia Press - Future of Work & Automation

This is the future of work

Nobody thinks it will happen to them: a more automated world

We naturally have this healthy skepticism of technological disruption. Most of us have never witnessed “disruption” in our field, relevant to our skillset. We believe we are immune. Even the repetitive tasks in our job, we assume we’ll always be doing them.

With all the unfulfilled hype around technologies such as artificial intelligence and blockchain, who can blame us? The world is changing fast, sure, but it’s slow to mature. Let’s face it, our robot overlords haven’t even been born yet in 2019.

We’ve been told the future was some dystopia of robots taking over our lives, and it hasn’t happend by 2020, so how likely is it to happen by 2040? Or will it?

Yet another report begs to differ. A new report by the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, titled, Automation and Artificial Intelligence: How Machines Affect People and Places is raising some eyebrows.

25% of jobs in the US are under threat by Automation

How urgent or close are we to the robot apocalypse in the future of work that really impacts the labor force? Well if you work or have roles in the following fields you might want to pay attention:

• Transportation,
• Food prep and production
• Office admin

Those are the major industries supposedly most under threat with among those at highest risk, with robotics and artificial intelligence threatening to automate in the neighborhood of 70 percent of tasks, according to the study.

The AI-Human Workforce

You are particularly at risk if you are a low-wage earner, male and have a job that requires more repetition. Though different studies have shown mixed results as to if women in the service industry are more at risk than men in low-wage grunt roles.

The usual finding here occur where they see activities involving processing, data collection and physical labor are quite unsurprisingly the most at risk here.

Retail, transportation and finance could really see significant changes in the next 20 years, to the point that they will be nearly unrecognized as to how they operate today. 2040 isn’t just an upgrade for these industries, it’s a near total transformation.

Many actually believe some jobs will be lost, but more will be created by intelligent automation. There is a significant camp that thinks AI will create more jobs than it eliminates. I’m not so sure, since this disruption will be occurring in many fields at the same time where skill-shortages in new emerging fields are highly likely, think of cybersecurity for example where the shortage will be chronic.

Gartner and Accenture reports have been nearly too optimistic about AI’s improvement of the workforce in recent years with forecasts AI will add more jobs than it disrupts. As a futurist, I find they are speaking an elite narrative of the future of work that isn’t realistic at least in the short-term.

Education still matters in the future of work. Essentially, more than half of jobs that don’t require a bachelor’s degree are at risk of automation, compared with just a quarter of jobs that do — according to CNBC.

Young people will have a hard time in an economy where automation and robots will be increasingly likely in fields they wish to enter. For instance, “Youth, and less educated workers, along with underrepresented groups all appear likely to face significantly more acute challenges from automation in the coming years,” according to the study. “Young workers and Hispanics will be especially exposed.” It’s not too bright for young workers who might not have access to high-skill fields or the best universities in the 2030s.

Since virtually all jobs are going to begin to experience some pressure from automation, the future of work is something I consider under-hyped. As a futurist I keep my eye on this and the narratives we tell ourselves, countless studies point to the real impact of automation and the breaking point of its entry into the mainstream appears to be around 2025, that’s when automation starts to get more serious in how it scales.

In an AIoT (artificially intelligent internet of things) more organizations will combine artificial intelligence and robotic process automation to create digital workers. As the cloud matures, so too do virtual, remote and gig-economy jobs. It’s widely understood a historically low unemployment rate is actually due to chronic part-time work rise. We call this involuntary part-time work and it’s becoming not just a norm, it’s distorting how healthy the workforce and economy actually are. To rely on unemployment rates that aren’t factual of the quality of jobs, it’s a kind of fraud by the government to look good.

Even in very human fields where relationships supposedly were key, we are noticing a huge change of routines. Think about human resources for a moment. Now algorithms scan resumes for desired keywords, and chat bots arrange interviews with candidates even with early stage screening done now totally with AI. If AI can help automate and streamline hiring what can it do with service jobs, customer service and routine human interaction? That’s the thing, it’s not just robots but upgraded software with AI.

The economic recession of 2020 will definately give automation a boost. This is because automation is more quickly adopted during economic downturns when companies look to slash labor costs. As 4IR countries emerge such as Japan, South Korea and China, how we think of tasks and working with AI is significantly different, and automation is accelerated by widespread change not just impacting manufacturing or isolated jobs, but entire industries being transformed in a single generation. That era of the future of work is very near, according to the majority of these reports.

Enjoyed this article? Subscribe to Utopia Press Series at the top. Find my daily writing too on Medium.