AI, Robotics, and Job Displacement

Prepare yourself -- robots and artificial intelligence (AI) are stealing your jobs.

According to the Kazanah Research Institute, more than half of all current jobs in Malaysia are at high risk of being affected by automation in the next one to two decades.  While this may appear to foreshadow a decrease in the number of foreign workers, four out of five of the jobs at risk are semi-skilled, and 90% of all semi-skilled jobs are held by Malaysians.

Meanwhile, more than 670,000 jobs have already been displaced by automation in the United States.  As the number of robots is expected to increase by a factor of four by 2025, an estimated 3.5 million more American jobs will be lost.

Recent research by the Mckinsey Global Institute estimates that by 2030, up to 800 million jobs will be displaced by automation globally and 30% of the workforce in economies like China, Japan and Germany may need to switch occupational categories and acquire new skills.

It’s highly likely that you or someone you know has already lost their job to automation.  Accountants, restaurant staff (been out for sushi lately?), travel agents, factory workers, taxi drivers, agricultural workers and retail cashiers have all been displaced, and the list of occupations at risk continues to grow longer.

What the science fiction writers have told us is true: Robots are taking over the world.

Or are they?  Maybe there is a reason why we call it science fiction.

Experts surveyed by the Pew Research Center in 2014 seem to be more optimistic about the future than science fiction.  While 48% of the respondents predict massive job Pdisplacement, income inequality, and even breakdowns in the social order, a slight majority (52%) predicts that new technologies will actually create new jobs, industries, and ways to make a living, just as it has been doing since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.

In other words, new technologies will create new jobs.

Just as it has since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, new technology will adequately provide sufficient employment and undiscovered jobs for new generations of workers.

Next week we’ll take a look at new technologies through history.