http://www.technologyreview.com/view...mputerization/
Report Suggests Nearly Half of U.S. Jobs Are Vulnerable to
Computerization
Oxford researchers say that 45 percent of Americas occupations will
be automated within the next 20 years.
Rapid advances in technology have long represented a serious potential
threat to many jobs ordinarily performed by people.
A recent report (which is not online, but summarized here) from the
Oxford Martin Schools Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology
attempts to quantify the extent of that threat. It concludes that 45
percent of American jobs are at high risk of being taken by computers
within the next two decades.
The authors believe this takeover will happen in two stages. First,
computers will start replacing people in especially vulnerable fields
like transportation/logistics, production labor, and administrative
support. Jobs in services, sales, and construction may also be lost in
this first stage. Then, the rate of replacement will slow down due to
bottlenecks in harder-to-automate fields such engineering. This
€śtechnological plateau€ť will be followed by a second wave of
computerization, dependent upon the development of good artificial
intelligence. This could next put jobs in management, science and
engineering, and the arts at risk.
The authors note that the rate of computerization depends on several
other factors, including regulation of new technology and access to
cheap labor.
These results were calculated with a common statistical modeling
method. More than 700 jobs on O*Net, an online career network, were
considered, as well as the skills and education required for
each. These features were weighted according to how automatable they
were, and according to the engineering obstacles currently preventing
computerization.
€śOur findings thus imply that as technology races ahead, low-skill
workers will reallocate to tasks that are non-susceptible to
computerization€”i.e., tasks that required creative and social
intelligence,€ť the authors write. €śFor workers to win the race,
however, they will have to acquire creative and social skills.€ť