Experts with the Word Economic Forum (WEF) say that there will be seven million less jobs available in 2020 than now. Oxford University experts warn that 20 years from now 39 percent of people will lose their jobs.
And who will be the first to worry?
Office employees and shop-floor workers
Industrial workers will be the next to be phased out by the onslaught of intelligent robots.
WEF experts insist that the loss of jobs in some sectors will made up for by new jobs available on other economic sectors. According to them, there will be 2 million more high-tech jobs available four to five years from now. Market demand for highly qualified workers, data analyzers and trade representatives will rise.
Men will end up winners with one new job to be on offer for three lost ones. For women the projected ratio is 1 to 5.
Public caterers and bookkeepers
McDonald’s former US boss Ed Rensi told Fox Business that it would be cheaper to buy a $35,000 robotic arm than to hire “an employee who’s inefficient making $15 an hour bagging French fries.”
An intelligent system can do 86 percent of what human bookkeepers and auditors normally do and 53 percent of the duties normally performed by salesmen and sales managers.
The best way to keep one’s job when machines start squeezing people out is to upgrade one’s professional skills now, experts suggest.
Mechanical pharmacist and robotic lawyer
The world’s number one online retailer Amazon have their warehouses 100 percent manned by orange robots on wheels, which take out items from shelves and bring them to their human “colleagues“ to scan. As a result, productivity has gone up a whopping 300 percent!
There is a robotic pharmacist now at work at the University of California, San Francisco. The computer receives a prescription while the robot packs the required medicine and hands it to the client.
Bloomberg has a number of robotic journalists on its payroll. They do a great job writing short items and reports.
Global law firm Baker & Hostetler, recently hired a robot lawyer created by ROSS Intelligence. Built by IBM, the robot works at the law firm’s bankruptcy department.
In Russia, where all attempts to introduce electronic systems have so far been bogged down by red tape, paper pushers have nothing to fear, at least for now.
“Even though Russia is now able to offer high-quality electronic products, their introduction takes so much time and effort that companies are reluctant to invest their money in such programs,” said Moscow-based HR-consultant Artyom Zyuryukin.
This means that within the next decade Russian rank-and-file workers will have nothing to worry about. But they should as futurologist Dick Peltier warns that in 2040 robots will account for more than half of all jobs available in the world.
