Robots Are Coming For Your Job!!!!
There is at least a 33% chance that your job will be replaced by automation over the next 10-20 years. Are you prepared?
For some reason this concept causes great debate. Organizations from the World Economic Council to Morgan Stanley have done studies regarding the future of employment. While the percentages very among the different studies, the conclusion is always the same: massive amounts of jobs will be eliminated over the next couple decades. Millions of people will find themselves no longer working in their chosen field through no fault of their own. Indeed, the robots are coming for your job!!!
Technology Always Created More Jobs Than It Destroyed
This is the main argument people make when discussing this topic. Throughout history, at least our technological history, technology has created more jobs than it destroyed. This is a fact that cannot be denied. It is also true that, over the past 150 years, people made the same proclamation that I am today without fruition. Their fears were unfounded so why is this time any different?
At the end of the 19th century, we saw a migration away from the agricultural realm to the industrial. At that time. the economy was shifting from one based upon the fields to one of factories. We were in the Industrial Age and what a boom it proved to be. Technological advancements allowed us to make more produces for less money, hence employing a lot more people. This is a transition that created more jobs than one could ever imagine when we were basically based upon our ability to farm.
We also saw a similar shift a half a century later when we moved from the industrial age to one that was based upon service. This too led to another massive jump in productivity especially when computers were introduced. Once again jobs grew as the wealth of nations increased. Technology was, once again, a job creator.
So what is different now? If you look at this first shift, from agriculture to industrial, that took place over the period of about 50 years. By the same token, the second one occurred over a 30 years period. In other words, it was decades in the making before we saw a massive displacement. The same is not true today. What use to require 20 years of technological development now occurs in 3. This pace is only increasing and will go supersonic when AI is implemented on a large scale.
Therefore, the difference between today and the past is speed.
It Comes Down To Skills
The main issue is the skillset that is now required compared to what occurred in the past. During the agriculture to industrial shift, the change in skills was not that astronomical. One could be in the field one day and trained to rivet a screw 12 hours a day the next. There was not that big a leap in skills needed. Factor in the time element where, as the industrial age progressed, greater skills were taught in school hence providing the workforce with the necessary tools.
We saw this repeat when we shifted from industrial to service. Over time, people were trained to be lawyers, accountants, or sales people. Software coding and network engineering were all taught in schools. We saw kids taught skills their parents were not which enabled them to enter the workforce in a field their parents never even knew existed. This was acceptable since the fields the parents were in were not changing greatly over time leading them to have career stability.
Here again we see the speed of change affecting the prospects of the workforce. Skills acquired in the last 10 years could well be worthless in the next 10. Take a look of this list of jobs that will most likely be gone:
MRI/XRay technician
Paralegal
Junior Acocuntants/Bookkeeper
Stock Broker
Car Salespeople
Copier technician
Medical Billing Person
Real Estate Appraiser
Insurance Adjuster
What are these people going to do? How many of them can switch to software coding so as to create virtual reality games? Before you answer, consider that I have a timeline of under 5 years for a couple of these professions (stock brokers are almost eliminated already). Automation is starting to impact all of these fields with some heavy players investing large sums of money to reap the benefits. This fact is compounded when you consider that we live in a world dominated by large multi-national corporations who sole focus is on the bottom line (no matter what they spew, that is what they care about) and the easiest way to improve that is to invest in automation.
Automation is the wave of the future. The likes of Tesla, Google, Apple, and Amazon are just a few of the corporations investing heavily in it. So are IBM, Home Depot, McDonals, Proctor & Gamble, and Wal-Mart. Some of the developments are in the field of robotics. However, much of the R&D is going to computer automation. So, while it took 30 years for robotics to completely dominate automobile manufacturing, it is taking a lot less time to automate tasks in the office. Robots come with dexterity issues, computer software does not.
And for this reason, we can expect the pace of things only to increase. The world and our political leadership is ill-prepared for this reality. Sadly, I believe they will awaken to the problem only after it is too late. The time to address this was yesterday.
Thank you for your time in reading this. By this time, you know the drill, if you liked this and found it informative........
Images provided by the Google Boys.
Great article, made me think. Thank you.
What I love about Blockchain is that normally it's low wage jobs disappearing due to automatization, but with decentralized organizations and platforms appearing, it is in fact CEO's, HR departments, accountants, administrative personnel and basically everybody who works in any large corporation that operates online. Who needs all those people who work at Youtube, when you've got a decentralized Youtube that runs fine on it's own? The same goes for every other tech company, including banks. This revolution will either get squashed, or it will be much bigger than any of us ever thought it would be.
Then again... who needs universal basic income, when everybody's attention is worth money through a tokenized digital future (steemit, basic attention token, tokenized ads, etc.)? Perhaps in the future, we will earn just be 'being' and doing what we always do, and being paid for the priviledge of having our attention? It's all so exciting, if you ask me.
It's not just decentralization that gives the market what it wants. Napster was peer-to-peer but they aren't still around. Instead Spotify and Apple are hiring like crazy and giving the market what it wants including social networking, curated playlists, discographies, etc. As these technologies converge innovators will always be able to benefit from the new cheap technology and offer something new. Blockchains alone won't solve this. It will just pace the way for some new product to come to market.
I don't know. The more I delve into the newer blockchain projects, the more I see things that will change the internet in ways I did not think possible. Napster failed because it was still centralized around the people 'running' Napster. But with blockchain variants coming up, there will be no central Napster-authority... open source projects mean anybody can keep working on it, and decentralized mining means there will always be some computers somewhere supporting the network, just like Bitcoin.
Have a look at Substratum (crypto) which aims to decentralize webhosting, so that it becomes impossible to see which website you visit. Great for getting around country-wide censorships like in China, but it becomes also impossible to see who is visiting, for example, a website interface to the blockchain. Hell, blockchain doesn't even need a browser.. you can access it through applications. Somebody just needs to write some code.
Not just that, but what about decentralized e-mail which becomes untraceable and undecipherable? Try hunting down software pirates if you can't follow their communication lines.
These hackers and ubernerds are really very smart and in many cases three steps ahead of regulators and governing bodies, who only just start looking at Bitcoin... while Bitcoin is, in fact, so 2014...
I agree with most of that, but my point is that entire economies that we don't understand yet will grow out of blockchains, and not just provide an opportunity to pirate. It's not like BitTorrent (open source, decentralized) replaced Napster, well it did for a few years, but Spotify and Apple Music did because people were fine paying a small fee for music-as-a-service. (If you were in the business of charging fees for music ownership you were largely disrupted, ie record companies).
You bring up valid points.
I agree 100% about the fact that many of the support services in large corporations will be eliminated with block chain. At the same time, entire industries will be disrupted like the financial arena with massive job loss. FinTech is already well on its way with more to come. I expect that to be a force over the next 5 years....look for the trading and mortgage markets to suffer a great deal of job loss.
I just think trading includes the blockchain jobs. Plenty of new fintech professions will be necessary to get the world moved over to digital assets, commodities, currencies and the trading of those assets.
The blockchain is also coming for our jobs. Bankers, contract managers, lawyers and title company jobs are going to dwindle. Yikes. I work in manufacturing and have seen the robots already. Administrative is next.
You lived through wave 1...not wave 2 is hitting...the office worker.
I agree with industries at the top of the block chain list. The entire real estate market, one of the largest based upon the impact on the economy, is going to see massive chain to due blockchain and, in my view, virtual reality.
We are in for a bumpy, yet fascinating ride.
Yes we are...and I am extremely optimistic about the future. Technology is taking us places we never imagined. Problems of today will be a distant memory in 5-10 years. For example, I think we will laugh that we argued over healthcare (at least the cost of it) in 10 years....that industry will be radically different, and cheaper, once technology really gets in there.
The challenges are going to be how individuals and society, as a while, adapt while embracing the change.
Agree that technology can take us there, bu t never underestimate the influence of big money and politics. For years, we've had the technology for fully-electric automobiles, yet the oil industry influenced the automobile manufacturing sector to ensure that fossil fuel burning vehicles are our affordable and primary choice. In terms of energy, think Nikola Tesla. We could have had free, clean energy for all, for decades now. But JP Morgan and Edison had other, more greedy ideas. Not trying to pee in your Cheerios, here, but reality dictates that no matter how progressive technological advances are, politics and greed can and will erect barriers to adoption if anyone else stands to lose money. One way we can combat this problem is to get involved in government, stay involved and resist the very corruption that causes this phenomenon. We can make the changes needed, but it requires our involvement.
The bankers are the core of it all throughout the last 150 years. It really boils down to them. They run the corporations and the governments since they control the money supply. Things are starting to change on that end.
The one advantage the bankers had is that they never operated under the nation-state model. That model was for the masses, they operated internationally from the start. They made money and operated wherever they wanted without regard to borders. Now we are seeing the internet, blockchain, and crypto giving the same advantage to the average person. That is the how we will see things change. For years, they controlled the message because they owned the media. While that is still true, more people now realize that Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw were the kings of fake news. Information is now available as long as one has an internet connection.
And yes innovations have been shelved for decades.
Why are there more bankers than ever after the Automated Teller Machine came to market 20 years ago then? These technologies allow more cheap innovation too, they aren't just destruction.
If your job can be taken by the robots these days, you didnt have much of a job to Begin with.. lol
That is true for the robots but no so much for the AI/computer automation.
When you look at the devastation in the legal industry, as an example, shows that some very good jobs will be eliminated. We are moving away from the blue collar people to the white collar arena. The middle class will take another hit.
True.
But like yall said. There will always need to be a Programmer until you program a program, that programs. 🤔 i think this is how skynet started.
LOL Dont start mentioning skynet, you will get the masses full of fear about AI.
Sadly, they dont realize they use AI each time they open up excel and it adds up their columns. AI is nothing more than code...
Back in the day we had Dos
LoL
There was no AI
😂
I bet us programmers will be safe. 😁
I would make that bet also....that is the ideal arena in my opinion....at least until AI gets advanced enough to program itself.
My guess is that is a while out.
Partition is bad. But whatever is past is past. We have only to look to the future.
- Mahatma Gandhi
Exellent post.
Thank you @dobartim
@OriginalWorks
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STOPA person should truly think outside of the matrix (not just the proverbial box). Think out of seeking job. Owning a job.
You don't mention bank teller as a job that automation replaces, how come?
ATMs (automated teller machines) are everywhere, but we don't see fewer bank teller. Why? Because the technology makes the host of running banks cheaper so more banks can open local branches and hire tellers.
You are presuming more branches were opened up because banks were cheaper to run. When you look at the growth of the economy since the ATM was implemented, it makes sense that more banking services were required.
Of course, the number of banking personnel has been dwindling down, especially on the investment banking end.
And I wouldnt be so quick to point to the financial arena as a means to discount the point of the article since fintech is far outpacing other technological developments. The only reason why the banks still have so many branches is because they own the real estate. After the 2009 collapse, much of the buildup in terms of branch expansion was stopped and, along with it, the number of tellers..
And that's why the additional banking services were needed (not just that branches were getting cheaper to run, I agree). Everything getter cheaper is exactly the reason the economy is growing, the pie is getting larger, crypto banks will have their own slice soon.