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.