Market analyst Brian Hopkins of Forrester
Research predicts that automated systems will
eliminate 6% of all jobs in the United States
by 2021.
Six percent of all jobs is pretty significant.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
there are about 144,598,000
jobs in the US today.
Six percent of that is nearly 8,676,000 jobs
that robots would take from us if general
employment rates stay the same.
The greedy mechanical jerks.
According to The Guardian, jobs that are poised
for automation include truck and taxi drivers
and customer service representatives working
in call centers.
And in a related story, it sounds like retail
workers might have some similar issues in
the near future.
Business Insider contributor Kate Taylor writes
that the retail giant Walmart has patented
an automated system that could potentially
displace employees.
The company is the largest employer in the
United States -- Forbes reported in 2015 that
Walmart had 2.2 million employees.
The patented system sounds a lot like robotic
shopping carts.
The carts would be able to maneuver through
stores.
Customers could summon a cart when they enter
the retail space.
The cart would then follow the customer around
the store,
or even guide customers to specific shelves.
After a customer unloads the cart, it could
whisk itself away to a garage.
No longer would you see abandoned shopping
carts taking up space in a parking lot.
Beyond these features, the cart might be able
to perform some other tasks, such as moving
inventory around, retrieving requested products
and scanning merchandise.
These are jobs that human employees would
typically perform.
So it’s possible these carts could replace
living, breathing humans.
But it’s also possible that Walmart would
reassign employees
to act in customer-facing jobs.
This could help cut down on problems the company
has encountered recently, such as shoplifting
or violence in stores.
And that’s an important thing to remember
-- even if machines eliminate 6% of jobs in
the US, we may create more jobs than we lose.
It will probably be difficult to transition
people from one type of job to another, but
not impossible.
So perhaps we aren’t quite on the brink
of the robo apocalypse just yet.
On the other hand, that day is coming.
Ultimately, pretty much every job is destined
to become automated.
The ones that will be first to go will be
repetitive jobs that are easy to replicate
mechanically or digitally.
The more complex and variable a job is, the
more challenging it is to automate.
Perhaps we will reach the tipping point in
just five years.
That’s it for today!
If you’ll excuse me, I need to go do something
that makes me look busy so that a robo video
host doesn’t replace me.
While I do that, you guys should go and subscribe
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