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."

Comments

Yes yes yes

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re: Yes yes yes

[peragrin]

We need to separate employers from healthcare anyways.

Re:Yes yes yes

[PopeRatzo]

which means people of the future will be doing other tasks.

Yes. Cleaning the homes of people who own factories.

What happens when we get to a point where we just don't need everyone to work in order to provide the goods and services people want? I'm thinking we may have already reached that point in some developed countries. Then what?

Unless we're prepared to have some big (and forced) reductions in populations, we had better get comfortable with larger welfare states.

I always get bothered when I hear politicians and pundits talk about "labor participation rates". Until the 1960s, we had much lower labor participation rates in the US. Families were able to get by and make progress only having one person in the family working full time. Today, if you're a stay-at-home parent you are counted as "out of the labor force" and politicians will use you as a statistic for why the economy is bad. But that's an ass-backward way of looking at it. If we had a good economy, we'd be able to thrive on a much lower labor participation rate. I mean, what are we talking about here. If someone in 1980 had told me that in the 21st century we'd all have to work harder, for longer hours, and longer into our lives in order to survive, I would have thought they were crazy. But that's where they're at.

Productivity is at record levels, but everyone has to work harder and longer. Does that really make sense to anyone but a "free market conservative"?

Re:Yes yes yes

[peragrin]

Your parents got pensions too because companies cared about employees.

Caring about employees affects the bottom line. In order to maximize human resources those resources. Must be step mined and discarded. How else is the CEO supposed to get his annual bonus? Improve sales?

Re:Yes yes yes

[Beck_Neard]

Oh it definitely is a leisure society - for the top 1%. See, a while ago the rich assholes figured out that as computer technology was improving, people were working less and less. But they couldn't bear to have people working 20-hour weeks and getting paid for 60 hours of work. Instead they decided that they would fire 2/3 of the workforce, push the remaining 1/3 to insane limits, end silly stuff like employee bonuses or overtime, and call it 'restructuring'.

And what about the possibility that the government will catch on to this scheme and force them to pay their dues back to society? They've insured themselves against that - by making the word 'Socialist!' toxic and propping up Fox News.

Re:Yes yes yes

[PopeRatzo]

You can have a much higher standard of living today with one person working than you could in the 60s!

You are absolutely wrong. Real incomes are way down from 1960's standards. In 1960, my parents could own their own single-family home, send two kids to private school and college (no student debt!), set themselves up for a comfortable retirement, and take a couple of vacations every year. Buy a brand new Chevrolet Impala every 4 years. And then leave the paid-off house to their kids, along with a nice bit of change. And my father was a machinist who did not finish high school.

Tell me, do you really believe that a family of four could live like that today on one salary? Let's have a show of hands: How many of you reading this believe a family of four could have this type of a lifestyle on one salary? I'll be most of you won't get this lifestyle with two. And your kids will start life with six figures of college debt.

I could certainly make enough helping people install their home theater systems to have them help me with interior decorating, and so on.

So, you see us going to an all-barter economy? When? And what are you going to use to buy food? You going to trade home stereo installations for a loaf of bread?

Re:Yes yes yes

[Beck_Neard]

Give it a rest.

I founded a successful business, from concept to turning a profit. Made a good amount of money too. I've seen the ins and outs of the 'capitalist' system, and it's ugly. You're right that small businesses are being destroyed. But gov't is not the (main) culprit. It's large businesses.

You're right that what we have isn't capitalism. But it's not socialism either. It's socialism for the rich and 'fuck you' for the poor. At least if it was free-market capitalism we wouldn't be hypocrites.

Take healthcare. Believe it or not, we have enough money to, for instance, offer affordable health care for every single person - without shoving the premium onto the shoulders of young people like Obamacare does. But we're not going to do that. Because 'socialism is evil!' or something.

Re:automation + liberal capitalism = disaster

[ShanghaiBill]

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.

Mega Rant

[JimSadler]

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.