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.

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.