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One In Three Jobs Will Be Taken By Software Or Robots By 2025, Says Gartner
dcblogs writes: "Gartner predicts one in three jobs will be converted to software, robots and smart machines by 2025," said Peter Sondergaard, Gartner's research director at its big Orlando conference. "New digital businesses require less labor; machines will make sense of data faster than humans can," he said. Smart machines are an emerging "super class" of technologies that perform a wide variety of work, both the physical and the intellectual kind. Machines, for instance, have been grading multiple choice test for years, but now they are grading essays and unstructured text. This cognitive capability in software will extend to other areas, including financial analysis, medical diagnostics and data analytic jobs of all sorts, says Gartner. "Knowledge work will be automated."
Sure sure, I've been hearing about the leisure society since the 1970s when I was a kid. I believed it too. Turns out that the people in charge in this world have serious issues with other people working less than them...
We'll find even more creative ways to distract ourselves with ever more bureaucracy in public and private affairs. Everyone I worked with 15 years ago as an engineer is now in management. What are they managing? Where is this productivity I keep hearing about?
I want a ten hour workweek. I want to be able to have the same lifestyle as my parents had 40 years ago with one income!
We already have the capability to feed, house, and clothe everyone on the planet and look at how many people do without their basic needs being met.
Yet almost all of those unfed and unclothed people live in countries that are not liberal, and most of them live in countries that are not capitalist, or were not capitalist in the recent past. Meanwhile, the top countries by per capita GDP, and by income equality, are liberal, capitalist democracies.
If liberalism, capitalism, and automation were the cause of poverty, then America, Western Europe, and Japan would be starving, while Afghanistan, Liberia, and Somalia would be on top.
Average, that is, or approaching it.
Ever notice how more and more of the unemployed are unable to re-enter the workforce, and college grads are giving up and moving home? Humans can be worked for 40 hours without undue complaining given a large enough reward (flat screen TVs and SUVs), so that's how long the working humans will go. That leaves more and more people in the 0 hour/week class.
In the US, there are (roughly) 330 million people, and around 120 million of them are employed full time. In a gross simplification, we're already down to an average of a 15 hour work week. If we convert one in three current full time jobs to computers, and presume that the general employment ratio trend were to remain constant without that, that would put us a (surprise) an average of 10 hours per week per person.
So, remember that as you work your 40 hour week that there will be 3 unemployed people who are balancing out that equation. (And before the far right chimes in, statistically 2 of those 3 loafers will be in your own family, though there certainly will be a (bigger) class battle on the horizon if the unemployable start living it up too well)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I'm pretty sure random chance is more accurate than Gartner anyway.
Why?
Why won't it be any different?
Do you think the factory workers will all quit and become engineers, to repair the robots?
Do you think the factory workers will all quit and become writers, writing books?
Who will buy them? The factory workers that are now authors?
What about the drivers? Won't be too many decades before self-driving cars are the order of the day. There go a lot of jobs right there.
Not everyone is capable of becoming an engineer. Not everyone is capable of becoming a writer.
Not everyone wants to.
What happens when there are fewer jobs than now, but the population is about the same? The new jobs that will appear will be far fewer than than the jobs that disappear.
The advent of even semi-intelligent robotics will displace millions. We don't need 50 million robotic engineers. We don't need 50 million authors, or 50 million interpretive dancers.
What happens when the bulk of people can't afford to house or feed their familes? Something must change, something will change, but what? How soon?
Wealth is being concentrated at the top and what's going to happen is they'll find that robots are cheaper and make fewer mistakes in a variety of roles.
You must have some remarkable insight, other than "This has all happened before..." to be able to say so confidently that "It won't be any different this time," because this time is nothing like anything that has happened before.
This time, we're replacing ourselves with machines that can perform the same jobs faster, cheaper, and without error.
Why is it that people are deaf, dumb and blind?? The purpose of all technology is the elimination of labor. Most employment has already been eliminated. So a statement that one third of existing employment will be eliminated soon is not a shock at all. I would be shocked if it is as low as one third by the way. Most of us recall the offices with one girl at a desk to answer phones and type a bit and do books. Cell phones eliminated those employees by the millions. And computers enable people to type nice correspondence that only skilled typists could accomplish with a typewriter. Meanwhile accountants took a severe hit when Turbo tax and the like were used by the masses as well as small businesses. It is just a part of a trend. Go back to the days when we used horses and mules to transport ourselves and our products. Is anuone even slightly aware of how much work is involved in keeping a horse? TRUTH: we will be forced to abandon capitalism soon. Some kind of social welfare state will be the only possible answer. It will be normal for most of society to be supported by taxes paid by businesses. It is not because of beliefs or values or any of that junk. It is because it is the only system fit to survive. We will experience shocking changes in the way we live and some will be for the better. You can also bet that we will be regualted in our behaviors more than at any time in history. Things like vacation cruise ships may cease to exist. international travel may be banned. And there will be all kinds of conflicts on allowing imports and exports.
In the future I expect more and more small businesses and boutiques. You can run a small yet profitable business with just two or three people.
Never mind that you are operating in a high-failure part of the private sector with people that cannot really afford to fail. That, and you have no scale to offset purchase costs, especially those relating to benefits.
You don't need an army of accountants, managers or other people who provide only a drain on resources for no increase in value.
Just try and run a small business without retaining an accountant or lawyer. Or these days, a computer tech.
Yes, you can do it all yourself, but if you do, you won't have time to do what you do well. And you'll have a half-rate accountant, a failure for a lawyer and an incompetent security menace for a computer tech, unless you happen to have talent in those fields.