A.I. Expert Says Automation Could Replace 40% of Jobs in 15 Years
by Don Reisinger
Fortune
January 10, 2019



Considering that a 40% job loss to technology may result in rampant unemployment among the workforce, families may want to help their students develop a firm understanding of:
- financial literacy (personal finance and budgeting),
- lifestyle choices (needs vs wants),
- prognosticating when choosing potential future careers
..(US Occupational Outlook Handbook here: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/).

I am still waiting for that paperless office that was supposed to be here 20 years ago and those shorter work hours.

I sort of agree with this prediction. I actually give it about 20 years. What inspired that thought was stories like this: Big Swing: Robot Sportswriter Outperforms Human. That's the kind of under-the-radar report that I've seen turn into disruption in the past. As much as I'd like it to be robots, the real disruption is a dozen programmers writing software that can do the job of thousands of people for a small annual subscription fee.

I think the safe jobs are going to be the one's requiring a broken thing to be fixed. We've had visions of robots replacing production lines for a long time, but an automated mechanic/plumber/electrician doesn't come up much. I don't think it's impossible, but it's probably a lower priority.

Recent WSJ article -

White-Collar Robots Are Coming for Jobs
A combination of AI and globalization could reshape the workforce like nothing we’ve seen before. Richard Baldwin, professor of International Economics at the Graduate Institute, Geneva, explains.
By Richard Baldwin
The Wall Street Journal
January 31, 2019

I think it will be less than 10 years. Saw a speech by an AI expert at U of Toronto who said agi would be way off and 6 months later, a company announced that they were close and AGI would be within 5 years.

Besides the trades, there is also picking food. Even with AI in agriculture, someone has to pick the food.

Just a few links related to this topic...

Machine Learning, a branch of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Interesting vocabulary and translation:
Read about Data Mining and its uses, including predicting outcomes/performance/achievement in Education.
To what degree might the current encouragement for ALL pupils to go on to college be driven by the desire to collect a more robust set of data on the population?

Example of a successful application:
data analytics, used for focused marketing (2012).
How many human jobs might these analytics have replaced?

Example of mixed application:
No pilot required (or maybe having a knowledgeable human pilot who can override the system, is still a good idea?)

Example of unsuccessful application:
What happens when human cannot override machine? (Tesla)

Example of use in medical diagnosis:
doctors who may rely on AI... could miss out on learning

Related Article on AI and Engineering:
a growing number of narrow AIs that exceed human abilities

Related depiction in entertainment:
Sci-fi movie WALL-E (2008) Rated G
Robots (such as WALL-E and EVE) work, most people have nothing to do and suffer greatly for it.

The Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH) does not yet appear to be updated with information regarding the role of technology (AKA: Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning, data analytics and other computer functions) in reducing jobs available for humans in the foreseeable future.

Self-driving trucks begin mail delivery test for U.S. Postal Service
Heather Somerville
Reuters
Business News
May 21, 2019 / 5:08 AM



Here is a link to the San Diego-based startup TuSimple.

In this old thread, what does your child want to be when they grow up? (2015), it is interesting to see the jobs, careers, and pasttimes envisioned by the children who will be the future adults facing the tech-takeover of many functions.

In an article titled "The Case for Compassionate Meritocracy" (https://neuralnetworking.substack.com/p/the-case-for-compassionate-meritocracy), by Neural Networking, dated March 25, 2021, the author suggests that technology-driven GDP growth might fund future universal income rather than allowing the wealth to be retained by the few roboticists and AI researchers. Also note that "the text-generating GPT-3 neural network ... wrote parts of several paragraphs" of that article. Additional information on GPT-3 which may be of interest: https://www.digitaltrends.com/features/openai-gpt-3-text-generation-ai/

This thread about technology replacing jobs, and specifically the post about self-driving trucks, came to mind when I saw this news story today:

Tesla driver ticketed for falling asleep while on autopilot at 82 mph
MSN news
May 18, 2021

In this instance, automation may have saved lives.
And yet, the irony is, this person was commuting to their job as a driver for a delivery service!

This article may be of interest:

Top 10 Jobs That Robotics And Automation Will Take Over In 2022
by Disha Sinha
Dec 13, 2021
Analytics Insight

Many of these may not be the dreamed-about career, but several jobs in the service industry or in office work have historically been great high school and college employment, providing a broad array of opportunities to learn and practice a variety of employment skills.
One position, accountant, has been a much sought-after opportunity for a variety of businesses.

Human proofreaders understand the crafting of a new portmanteau, or a punny turn of a phrase, which artificial intelligence (AI) may, unfortunately, "correct" causing work to lose originality and the authentic voice of the author. (How often we may experience auto-corrupt rather than auto-correct!)

I see the prognosticated takeover of these jobs by automation and robotics as a change in society, to an ever-increasing reliance on the grid, while decreasing self-reliance and the development of a number of skills in creative thinking, work-around alternatives and stop-gap measures, short-term and long-term thinking and planning, interpersonal communication, teamwork, flexibility and resilience.