By Jody Chudley
This post Is Your Paycheck Safe From Robots? appeared first on Daily Reckoning.
Have you ever wondered if you were reading something that wasn’t actually written by a human?
Don’t worry, while I have been accused of being a “little stiff” given my accounting background, I can assure you that I’m very much a real person.
However, there is little doubt that at some point today you will read something that was written by a robot. The Washington Post has been using its own artificial intelligence called Heliograph for a couple of years now that even recently covered the Olympics. The Associated Press is also using robots extensively to cover corporate earnings.
But I’m not here today to tell that robots are taking jobs from writers. I’m here to tell you that robots are going to be taking jobs from almost everyone…
This is something that we all need to have on our radar.
An Oxford study conducted by Carl Frey and Michael Osbourne, which consulted with a panel of experts on artificial intelligence, found that 47% of jobs in the United States are at risk of automation over the next 20 years.1 I don’t know which number is more concerning — the 47% or the fact that it is going to happen within 20 years.
Seriously, this is scary stuff!
The 47% sounds like an absurdly high number, but when you start going through profession by profession it quickly does start to make more sense.
We can start with just a couple of the obvious blue collar occupations…
Truck Drivers – There are upwards of 3 million truck drivers in the United States who are clearly in the crosshairs of driverless vehicles. Not only will eliminating those jobs save money, it will save many lives by removing human error from causing accidents.
Fast Food Industry – Google tells me that there are 3.8 million Americans working at fast food restaurants.2 Nearly every one of them is at risk given where we already are with automated food preparation and self-serve kiosks. Those jobs are very important to the people that have them. And it will be brutal when they’re let go.
I could go on and on.
Waitresses, blackjack dealers, telemarketers and receptionists. MIT Technology Review estimates that 83% of the jobs that pay less than $20 per hour are at risk of being automated.3
And this isn’t just a blue collar problem. There are plenty of white collar occupations that are in a similar boat…
I can think of several off the top of my head.
Insurance Underwriter – Making an underwriting decision on whether or not to provide you with insurance (and at what price) is all about calculating risks. Who can calculate better, a person or a robot?
Loan Officer – If I owned a bank, I would probably prefer that the lending decisions be made by a robot because robots don’t have hearts or loan volume targets to meet. People can be convinced into doing things like lending money, and chasing a bonus might make them lend more. …read more
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