This terrifying tool shows you whether or not robots will take your job
If artificial intelligence researchers, entrepreneurs and economists are to be believed, the robotic onslaught that will annihilate our jobs and transform all of society is nigh.
Thankfully, the BBC assembled a handy guide that calculates which jobs are likely to be automated in the next 20 years, based on data from a 2013 Oxford study.
The Oxford study identified nine skills people needed and used for each profession - including "social perceptiveness, negotiation, persuasion, assisting and caring for others, originality, fine arts, finger dexterity, manual dexterity, and the need for a cramped work space."
Just enter your profession, and click "Find my automation risk" to see where it falls on the scale.
As an example, I entered journalist, which has an 8% likelihood of automation. Here's part of the report the calculator spits out for that job:BBC screenshot
According to the BBC, the careers most immune to automation required employees to negotiate, help and assist others, and come up with creative ideas. The jobs that were least likely to be automated included social workers, nurses, therapists, and jobs that required creative and original ideas, like artists and engineers.
On the other hand, the jobs most likely to be taken over by AI or robots required people to squeeze into small spaces, assemble objects, or manipulate small objects. The top three jobs most likely to be automated are telephone salespersons, typists, or legal secretaries. In fact, some of these jobs are already being automated.
Here's the report for a legal secretary. It's not looking good:
Jerry Kaplan, author of "Humans Need Not Apply: A Guide to Wealth and Work in the Age of Artificial Intelligence," told Tech Insider that any person that toils through many "repetitive and structured" tasks for a living won't be safe from the bread lines."Even for what you think of as highly-trained, highly-skilled, intuitive personable professions, it is still true that the vast majority of the work is routine," Kaplan told Tech Insider.
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So what's left for the humans?
The study suggests that a lot of jobs are on the line - at least 47% of all employment in the US may be automated in the next 20 years.
But Toby Walsh, a professor in AI at National Information and Communications Technology Australia told Tech Insider that in the foreseeable future, that number could be much much worse.
"It's hard to think of a job that a computer ultimately won't be able to do as well if not better than we can do," Walsh told Tech Insider.
That being said, Walsh agrees with the Oxford study that artistic and creative work is probably the last stand for human jobs as we know them.
"Go into the most people-facing, artistic, creative places that you can think of," Walsh told Tech Insider. "The artists of the world are, for a long time, still going to be real physical people. The people who are in most people-facing, sociological, empathetic jobs are going to be people."
Calculate your job's future at the BBC >
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