US Workers Face A Higher Risk Of Being Replaced By Robots (cnn.com)

There's a surprising prediction for the next 15 years from the world's second largest professional services firm. An anonymous reader quotes CNN: Millions of workers around the world are at risk of losing their jobs to robots -- but Americans should be particularly worried. Thirty-eight percent of jobs in the U.S. are at high risk of being replaced by robots and artificial intelligence over the next 15 years, according to a new report by PwC. Meanwhile, only 30% of jobs in the U.K. are similarly endangered. The same level of risk applies to only 21% of positions in Japan.
61% of America's financial service jobs "are at a high risk of being replaced by robots," according to the article, vs. just 32% of the finance jobs in the U.K. (Those U.S. finance jobs tend to be "domestic retail operations" like small-town bank tellers, whereas U.K. finance jobs concentrate more in international finance and investment banking.) The firm's chief economist sees a world where new jobs are more likely to go to higher-skilled workers, and he ultimately predicts "a restructuring of the jobs market... The gap between rich and poor could get even wider."

Comments

Our Future.

[geekmux]

Regardless if people fight the idea or not, automation and AI decimating the concept and capability of human employment is no longer science fiction. And when US states started crying out for $15 minimum wage rates, the initial response back from corporations was to look towards automation, because that option was now worth the investment.

Coming to the conclusion that automation and AI would target countries with higher wage costs seems to be rather obvious. The real question is what will be done to control unending Greed from turning the planet into a Welfare state.

We keep talking about UBI, which is another concept that will become inevitable as automation and AI decimate human employment. The problem lies with funding UBI, which will likely be done through taxation. Unfortunately, corporations are some of the worst entities when it comes to actually paying taxes by employing armies of lobbyists to minimize or hide those obligations, with the end result being trillions sitting in offshore tax havens today. Since this will never change, unending Greed will all but guarantee that UBI will become nothing more than Welfare 2.0 for the masses.

You can forget the American Dream. You can forget the Human Dream. The reality of automation and AI is a global Welfare state, all because of Greed.

Re:Our Future.

[DarkOx]

Coming to the conclusion that automation and AI would target countries with higher wage costs seems to be rather obvious. The real question is what will be done to control unending Greed from turning the planet into a Welfare state.

Which will never work, UBI will never work. Why because people will never be satisfied with what they have. They will always want more. The planets resources remain limited. If its no longer a question of how hard they have to work for X; the answer to "why should I not have finer clothes, travel further faster, be warmer or be cooler, eat something nicer, etc will be that I should!"

There may be a short era of good feels, a generation that grew up working a no longer needs to and is simply satisfied with a life of comparative ease; but their grand children will demand free super sonic airline tickers, I promise you!

I am not going to pretend to know where any of this is headed. I don't think its UBI and I don't think its welfare state 2.0. I would be more worried about the collapse of states. You point out corporations are already paying armies of lobbyists to avoid taxes. You really think a group of top tier capital owner class types wont employ an army or robots that looks much more like the armies of the past and simply refuse to pay the taxes? What does for example Amazon need the government for once they can hire/build their own fully automated asset protection?

Re:Our Future.

[BarbaraHudson]

Which will never work, UBI will never work. Why because people will never be satisfied with what they have. They will always want more.

Which is why UBI will work. People won't just sit back and be lazy - they will want more, and will work for it. The whole "UBI will just create lazy people" meme is a lie, because people always want more.

Re:If robots were advanced and inexpensive enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

What if I could purchase a robot that could go out and earn a living for me?

It would be just like in the USA before the civil war of secession, where you can buy and sell slaves. The rich people get access to slaves, and those slaves displace the workers who would otherwise get paid.

But remember, basic income is an unfair handout!

[Anonymous Coward]

I have spoken with many people about why basic income is really the only way we can go unless we want the government to take all our land and go full communism (hint: that works out very badly). The major resistance always comes down to basic income being "welfare" even in spite of the fact that removing all other welfare is part of the basic income strategy and pays for it pretty effectively. So many people who have jobs and a home and a decent life and worked hard to get there just can't stomach the idea that the government might give people who haven't done any work $15K a year for doing nothing at all. There is a serious inability to look past themselves and consider that not everyone had their starting circumstances or had those paths available or is even capable of doing the same thing. "If I can work hard and make a good life for myself, they can too. If they're not where I am then it's entirely because they are [insert dismissal here, usually lazy]."

Hey, Captain High Horse! I see you have a lot of nice things in your home that you worked hard for and want to keep. So you don't want the government to take action to reduce crimes of necessity, right? Enjoy having your property at higher risk of theft, then! It's the path you chose!

We have to stop looking at ourselves or people richer than ourselves as some sort of template that all people could fit into if they just weren't lazy ignorant pieces of shit. Some people are just inherently smarter or better or more driven than other people. It's an uncomfortable fact of life. At some point the middle class will be totally hollowed out and the magical dismissal of the lazy other will give way to hatred for those in power that "allowed this to happen." Why do we need to suffer so mightily before we address the problems that are practically beating us over the head every single day?

Re: Machines replacing bank tellers?

[geekmux]

Human society NEEDS to be ready for the inevitable reality where NOBODY works, and the only people who "Make money", are those who OWN robots, or have a share in companies, and milk their investments.

Money ceases to be an essential functional commodity in such a circumstance, as people will invent alternative methods of exchange to obtain necessary services.

Either money has to be distributed for no labor expended by a governing body (basic income strategy), or true post-scarcity future economic models need to be created. There are no alternatives where really rich people get everything and everyone else just dies. (Sorry plutocrats, but that is how you destroy the human race, not live immortal, pampered lives.)

There is only one equation the human race needs to figure out in order to survive.

Solve for Greed.

Plutocrats turning the planet into a global Welfare state as Greed funds UBI at the lowest level possible will likely result in another concept coming to fruition.

Eat the Rich.

Re:Machines replacing bank tellers?

[quonset]

In other words, you have one point of failure. Power goes out, no business until the power is restored, no access to your money/accounts.

Sounds like a great opportunity for terrorists.

Re: Machines replacing bank tellers?

[BarbaraHudson]

Food and water are needs that are not going to go away. There has to be some mechanism for people to acquire these basic needs. A basic income would be a logical name for such a scheme. I wonder if anyone's ever tried it before? Oh, wait - it was tried back in the 70s in Canada and was a success.

The only reason it was canned was because, despite the evidence to the contrary, people thought it would make people lazy.