by Manish Gerewal from London

Many jobs us humans do today, will not be done by the humans as we move forward in time in the age of 4th industrial revolution –the estimates and scope of automation vary. Here are the World Economic Forum’s estimates1. In another five years’ time, more than 50% of the jobs will be automated.

In their seminal paper2 in 2013, Frey and Osborne, two academics from the University of Oxford, did an analysis of 702 jobs taken from the US Department of Labour and attached probabilities against each of the jobs, to indicate how they are susceptible they are to automation. The estimates varied, from nearly zero (i.e. very unlikely) to nearly one (very likely to be automated).So if you are a Physician, you have little to worry:

But then again if you are a Taxi driver, perhaps you should start learning some new skills.

How countries react to this, depends on if she is a developed nation or developing nation. For nations still developing, where the infrastructure may not be fully developed to take advantage of the new emerging technologies, the political climate may not be as stable, governance issues and pandemics, these nations may face additional challenges and may not be able to fully benefit from the automation or mitigate from it impacts of large scale unemployment.

The other main point to note is, just because a job can be automated, it may not necessarily have to be automated, as the economic benefit and/or other benefits may not make it a viable proposition.For organisations and nations to remain competitive, they will need “skilled” employees – relevant skills for the age of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, …Nations and organisations should keep their citizens/employees and leadership equipped with futureproof skills through continuous learning. To benefit, society needs to be upskilling continuously. Businesses need to support their workforce through re-skilling and Upskilling. Employees need to be proactive – own lifelong learning. Governments need to create enabling environments for all this to happen.

Current pandemic and skill shortages may accelerate the automation of certain jobs. This is why continual learning, development, and mastering human skill becomes essential. These “Human” skill will always be required, and more so now: mastering these skills will always stand you in good stead – creativity, originality, critical thinking, persuasion, negotiation, attention to detail, resilience, complex problem solving, etc

Not all is despair, estimates vary, and some estimates predict that more jobs will be created than lost to automation, and some the reverse may happen and some in between. What will new jobs look like? Here is a brief sample:  NLP Trainers – Natural Language Processes,  Algorithm Forensic Analyst – explain how the decision was made by the “machine”? Ethics Compliance Officer – upholding normal and morals of human values in the new world,                 Empathy Trainers, Automation Ethics Managers Etc. Who would have thought a few years ago that Drone Operator would be a paying job?

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