The robot revolution is always apparently just around the corner. Technology liberates human labor from repetitive, mundane tasks, freeing us to be more productive and take on more fulfilling work. Robots come for everyone’s jobs, put millions and millions of people out of work, and throw the economy and the future of employees into confusion.
Will A Robot Take Your Job?
We usually spend so much time talking about the potential for robots to take the jobs that we fail to look at how they are already changing them, sometimes for the better, but sometimes not. New technologies can give corporations tools for managing, monitoring, and motivating their workforces. The technology makes it easier for companies to maintain tight control of workers and squeeze and exploit them to increase profits.
Sean Chou, CEO of Chicago-based AI startup catalytic, thinks robots are stupid. He says that all you have to do is type in ‘YouTube robot fail.’ Even though robots are getting smarter all the time and serving the industry in new ways, Chou is firm in his belief that we are pretty far from the ‘Terminator.’ In this article, we will discuss AI and the future of employees.
AI Will Replace Some Jobs
The consensus among many experts is that many professions will be fully automated in the next five to 10 years. AI guru Kai-Fu Lee, CEO of Sinovation Ventures and author of the 2018 book “AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order,” posts on Medium that nearly half of the jobs will be automated by Artificial Intelligence within 15 years.
How Many Jobs Will AI Replace?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is expected to replace 85 million jobs globally by 2025, according to the World Economic Forum’s “The Future of Jobs Report 2020”. Though that might be scary, the report says it will also create 97 million new jobs in the same timeframe. As per the research, the growth in which AI will replace jobs will only accelerate, impacting the highly trained and poorly educated.
AI Impact On The Future Of Employees
Artificial intelligence is poised to remove millions of current jobs and create millions of new ones, some of which have not been invented yet.
AI will be replacing jobs in the future. The future of employees is impacted by AI. Employees in the healthcare, agriculture, and industrial sectors can all expect to see disruptions in hiring due to AI. Demand for employees, specifically in robotics and software engineering, is expected to increase.
As per Becker’s Hospital Review, AI will take over specific healthcare tasks related to revenue cycle management. Considering those developments and expectations, and based on multiple studies by the McKinsey Global Institute, Oxford University and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, there is massive and unavoidable change afoot.
Artificial Intelligence Needs Human Ingenuity
Many experts trust that among the biggest boons of AI, it can save humans from having to perform tedious, repetitive tasks that are part of their general duties, so they are free to concentrate on more complex and rewarding projects or take some much-needed time off.
Some say that increased productivity and efficiency might even shorten the work week. Chou says that the more technology encompasses, the more technology we demand, and the more people are involved in doing that.
He also says that the number of people necessary to deliver better technology grows hugely. Hence, you move from worrying about the impact of high technology to helping to create the technology.
There will be a constant need for training, maintenance, and data, to take care of all the exceptions. Those will all become new jobs and will be the future of employees.
AI As A Job Creator: A Different Kind Of Work
People’s armies around the world are involved in AI development. Researchers of AI hope they can build systems that can learn from smaller amounts of data. But for the future, human labor is essential.
Gigaom CEO Byron Reese has a similar take on how AI will affect the human workforce. He said that AI will be the most significant job engine the world has ever seen.
The BLS forecasts faster-than-average job growth in many occupations that AI is expected to impact: accountants, geological technicians, forensic scientists, technical writers, dietitians, MRI operators, financial specialists, web developers, medical secretaries, loan officers, customer service representatives, to name a very few.
AI In The Workplace: Preparing For Impact Realistically
Amazon, whose warehouses buzz with robots and will be highly automated in the coming years, announced that it would retrain a third of its 300,000-strong US workforce to $700 million. The company calls for a voluntary participation in a program “Upskilling 2025,” which is designed to teach skills to employees that they can apply to work in technical roles inside or outside of Amazon.
For Nicholson, thriving and surviving in an increasingly AI-powered world requires a multi-pronged approach. Firstly, he advises avoiding bullshit jobs. If you are bored with your job, it is probably a bullshit job, and the machines will probably eat it.
Chou says that people like to compare Artificial Intelligence to electricity. But electricity took one or two generations to go from idea to widespread adoption, whereas today, we are seeing the impact of technology occur much faster. Hence, the rate of fundamental social change is increasing, and it is taking a toll faster than people are ready and able to adapt.
While significant change is coming, a little advance planning by workers who stand to be replaced and the companies that employ them goes a long way. In short, stop fretting and start acting.
Lee wrote that there is no doubt that the revolution of AI will require re-adjustments and a great deal of sacrifice, but despairing rather than preparing for what has to come is unproductive and, perhaps, even reckless.
It is important to remember that our human knack for empathy and compassion is going to be a valuable asset in the future of employees and that jobs hinged on creativity, care and education will remain essential to our society.
