Tag: Robots

A working paper written for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates that about 14 percent of the jobs in 32 OECD countries, including the U.S., are at high risk of being automated.

That raw figure may not sound as dire as some of the previous numbers cited for the effect of automation and artificial intelligence on employment, and that’s what’s been grabbing the headlines over the past couple of days. But a close reading of the report, published last month, shouldn’t lead anyone to brush off the issue — as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin did last year.

The authors of the study, Ljubica Nedelkoska and Glenda Quintini, say the level of automation risk varies widely from country to country. Slovakia comes in on the high side (33 percent), while the projected risk is only 6 percent in Norway.

The high-risk percentage for the U.S. is 10 percent, which is significantly lower than the 47 percent that was cited in a provocative 2013 study by Oxford researchers. But even 10 percent translates to about 15 million U.S. jobs.

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It’s a thrilling time for technology, with innovations in artificial intelligence and robotics propelling society ever faster forward. But is it too fast?

That’s a question that came up more than once on March 21 during a panel discussion on automation’s impacts on society and work, presented at Seattle University by the MIT Enterprise Forum of the Northwest.

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The latest robot report has bad news for laborers and office support staff, good news for techies and healthcare workers. India looks bright, while Japan could face the toughest stretch.

Those are just some of the takeaways from McKinsey Global Institute’s data-packed analysis of the effects of automation on employment between now and 2030. The bottom line? Hundreds of millions of workers around the world will be displaced due to the revolutions in robotics and artificial intelligence.

“Displaced” is the key term: Many of those workers will adjust to the new conditions. But it won’t be pretty, McKinsey’s analysts say. As many as 375 million workers, including 38.6 million Americans, may have to switch occupations or learn new skills to hold down a job in 2030.

“Our key finding is that while there may be enough work to maintain full employment to 2030 under most scenarios, the transitions will be very challenging — matching or even exceeding the scale of shifts out of agriculture and manufacturing we have seen in the past,” the analysts write.

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