47% of all jobs will be lost through automation fuelled by AI...

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This number, 47% of jobs will be obsolete due to AI automation made headlines 6 years ago when a group of scientists sifted through the data of US laborers to come up with a little more than an educated guess.

A little later in 2016 this article here 47% of jobs in the next 25 years will disappear" looked at this.

Who will be subject to this AI revolution in terms of job loss risk? Blue collar or white collar workers?

Interestingly some researchers believe that first a foremost repetitive analytic white color jobs might be more in danger than tasks/jobs where a hand eye coordination with manipulation of physical objects is required. So, blue collar jobs may be safer a little longer. But also here the improvements in this field of AI and robotics are stunning!

Some argue that they've done the research to look at job losses in the past due to automation or general technical improvements.

Looking at the last 40 years they point at the army's of secretaries or telephone operators and so on we used to have everywhere, or look at the first wave of automation especially in the automobile industry that lead to some dramatic changes especially in the USA were a middle class of workers could afford to live a nice lifestyle with buying houses, having multiple cars, travelling and sending their kids to college.

Now just take a look at Detroit and some other cities that used to bloom til these automation changes tore through the jobs in the automobile industry.

Other's say that a look at history to understand where we will go from here only is valid if you don't compare apples with pears. More precisely if you look at multiple repetitions of similar events.

So only a few things had maybe a similar magnitude as the AI revolution.

In this regard I've heard these 3 here would qualify and I agree!:

• Steam engines
• electricity
• and the computer revolution

Why is that?

"Because the AI revolution is fundamentally replacing our cognitive process in doing a job in it's significance entirely, and it can do it dramatically better!"

Kai-Fu Lee AI scientist

So, surely the industrial revolution at the end of the 19th century had an quite big impact on everything as an example.

Over the course of 9 decades it had an massive, negative effect on the living standards of the workers.

Alike we find similar consequences due to the first automation wave that started in the early 70ties in the automobile industry.

Things for all of us will change dramatically and probably much faster than we expect.

These ~50% of jobs that are at risk in the next 25 years is an rather conservative guess.

I personally think that we'll see a much faster impact on the job market and to be quite honest I do not have the slightest idea how we will handle this once the masses that will loose their jobs stand on the streets.

Although happening for completely different reasons what we've seen in France with the yellow vest movement for example or the turmoil that Venezuela is in right now or Hong Kong... these all seem rather small compared to what could happen when 50% of the workforce isn't needed anymore... seemingly with the blink of an eye.

Maybe it'll be the already discussed automation- or "robot-tax" that will help to cover for an model like the "universal basic income" that you can hear about a lot in the last 5 years.

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A nice 360 degree look at AI and it's implications, politically, sociologically and economically is this relatively new documentary I've seen the other day!

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One thing seems clear to me... we're sooo not ready for this!

So, what do you think?

Is your job at risk?

What are your plans for these developments?

Am I completely wrong with my concerns and all will be good?

Let me know down in the comments please!

Cheers!
Lucky