Automation makes life easier but it also puts people out of work.
On this episode we take a look at 10 jobs that will be replaced by robots.
10.
Service Jobs This is already happening, service jobs are
starting to be replaced by self serve kiosks.
At my local walmart they recently removed 8 human run tills and replaced them with 14
self serve kiosks which is placed in front of the remaining 3 human operated tills.
1 employee tends to all 14 of these kiosk and when not busy helping people this person
is positioned in front of the entrance to the tills where they encourage people to use
self serve tills instead.
Self serve kiosks in fast food restaurants is becoming common too, Mcdonalds has these
stations where you can place your order removing the need for the staff at the front all together.
Even movie theatres have been using this for a long time.
Aside from being able to buy tickets online, ticket dispensing stations save you a ton
of time getting movie tickets and removes the need for employees.
9.
Doctors Doctors to varying degrees will be replaced
by automation with Radiologists at the top of the list.
Being one of the highest paid Radiologists require special training to be able to see
abnormalities in ct scans, x-rays, mris, ultrasounds and pet scans to properly diagnose patients.
Being estimated at an 8 billion dollar a year industry machine learning and automation can
evolve computers to be able to not only identify problems in a scan but do it significantly
faster and with a much greater degree of accuracy than a radiologist ever could.
Being able to find issues among shades of grey virtually indistinguishable to the human
eye, visits to the doctor in the future could quite possibly be just a trip to the lab with
a digital read out of any issues found.
Surgeons may see they positions being taken by robots as well.
Able to perform surgery with pin point accuracy with no limit on how many hours a surgery
will take to complete it’s hard to think of a situation where a surgical robot wouldn’t
do a better job than a human.
8.
Pharmacists Preparing and dispensing medications and drugs
the job of the Pharmacist is one that is going to cease to exist.
A job dependant on getting it right, a simple mistake could be disastrous for a patient.
Using robots to do this job was an obvious direction to go, which is exactly what has
happened at the UCSF medical center in San Francisco.
Computers at the pharmacy receive an order for a prescription and the robots go to work
preparing the medication needed in a sterile environment.
Over a years time the robots have prepared 350,000 doses of medication with 0 errors.
These robots can not only package up pills but can fill IV syringes or bags of medication.
The medication is placed in a receiving area for 12 hours to be picked up.
7.
Truck Drivers | Taxi drivers We covered this over a year ago when the first
autonomous truck delivery took place, truck drivers are not going to be needed in the
world of tomorrow.
A truck driving itself doesn’t need to sleep or a space to sleep, doesn’t need benefits
or breaks and will save companies millions a year.
While a driver will probably still be present in the truck for the first couple years to
verify the technology and to help with unloading cargo I can see this industry going to a model
that doesn’t involve people at all.
The same goes for taxi drivers, as companies race towards autonomous driving taxis, they
will be large vehicles with no steering wheel and just passengers.
The life of the taxi driver is becoming more and more obsolete with apps like uber and
lift but even uber and lift drivers will become obsolete when cars can drive themselves…
or shall I saw they are allowed to drive themselves as the teslas can already do this.
In the United States over 1.7 million truck drivers will be at risk of losing their jobs,
let alone the rest of the world.
6.
Rescuers Busting into a burning building to save the
family cat or a person stuck under a board will at one point be the job of the firehall
robot.
Able to lift significantly more weight, carry fire extinguishers for temporary situational
use, infrared scanners and other technology can be built into a super robot designed to
save people.
Rescues on the water will be replaced by flying drones with a rope and winch cable and for
earthquakes tiny robots with cameras will give a look into areas with collapsed buildings
to find survivors.
All these tasks are only able to be done by robots and removes the need to put a rescuer
in danger.
5.
Financial | Accountants Many financial jobs around the world are nothing
more than math, lots of math.
Being a master at math robots with advanced machine learning will outperform any humans
at the task.
Automating financial or bank related jobs will reduce errors at the bank as most of
them are caused by humans inputting numbers incorrectly such as with depositing cheques.
Not only bankers but accountants will see their careers being replaced by smart robots
that can do your taxes in a few minutes.
I’m all for this as accountants charge rates equal to that of heart surgeons yet instead
of mending hearts they break them when their client gets the bill.
It’s safe to say if a career is heavily based around math a robot will be doing it
in the future.
4.
Chef A hard job with long hours the chef will never
be completely replaced by robots but automation will vanquish many of these jobs.
High end restaurants with name brand Chefs will endure this storm the best but lower
end chef jobs won’t fair so well.
This can already be seen in places like Japan where specialty restaurants have robots doing
the cooking and robots serving the food.
Much like a surgeon robots can measure food with precision, flip, stir and rotate food
with perfection and aren’t affected by the heat in the kitchen.
Many of these jobs will be automated but at least this will also remove the chance of
getting spit in your food if you send it back.
3.
Lawyer Reviewing documents can be time consuming
and when you’re paying a lawyer $200 or $300 dollars an hour a big bill can add up
quickly.
Computers on the other hand work for free, now there is the cost of the machines themselves,
power, upgrades, maintenance etc but these costs are far less than paying any lawyer.
Machines are starting to be used to analyze documents, which they can do at far superior
rates to any human.
Humans get tired, exhausted or bored especially reading legal documents where computers can
work 24 hours a day.
As machine learning gets smarter the speed of analyzing documents increases and cost
of this software will drop further putting lawyers out of business.
Jumping over to another aspect of the job, real estate, this whole process will become
automated as well.
While this process differs per country it is relatively the same so only minor tweaks
to software will be needed to fully automate the duties of lawyer to buy or sell real estate
for their clients.
In Canada the lawyer is needed to read over the documents, do a title search and make
sure the title is clean, set up appointments for clients to sign documents and transfer
funds and deal with any holdbacks on the purchase.
All of this can be automated with computers.
Imagine walking into a law office that is operated only by machines, you present your
ID or passport which gets scanned, enter your bank account information and input your offer
on a property.
You’ll be notified by the computer when your offer is accepted you return to the office
to sign the documents which will be necessary to do in person as this whole process could
be online but for true verification I can only see this process happening in a facility
with numerous cameras.
You’ll sign a digital screen completing the process, and everything else will be done
automatically.
Currently when real estate is transferred a bunch of numbers need to be calculated,
property transfer tax, excess deposit, balance any easements dealt with and outstanding debts
and once the computer verifies the title is clear and clean the computer will register
the buyer as the new owner of the property and the whole process will not involve a single
human.
A side note here too as a little bonus, it's safe to say that realtors will become obsolete
too as properties will have home inspections registered to the property which will be pulled
up and presented to potential buyers limiting the need for realtors.
Other services realtor offer like knowledge of the neighbourhood can already be replaced
by things like walk score which shows what is around the address in question.
The other barrier with both realtors and lawyers is often language like in a city like Vancouver
where virtually all the buyers are Chinese.
Simple language translation will make it easier for anyone from around the world to buy real
estate in Canada, although it would be nice if the Canadian government would put a ban
on this as Canada has become the ideal place for foreign billionaires to hold investment
properties leaving Canadians without anywhere to live.
2.
Farmers Farming has become more advanced at a rapid
rate with larger and larger machines used to harvest the goods.
The next phase as humanity realizes we can’t pillage the entire landscape of earth like
what is happening in the amazon rainforest, farms will move into the cities in the form
of skyscrapers.
This is already happening in multiple places around the world.
Controlled environments with no soil just plants nutrients and grow lights produce food
just minutes from the consumers that will eat them.
These facilities largely controlled by robots only need a few personnel to operate them.
This will only be part of the decline for the need for farmers, as we learn more about
the microbiome people will convert their barren backyards into something that gives them not
only food but longevity.
1.
Soldiers For years now we have seen a shift towards
machines doing the job of humans in the military.
Any chance to replace a human with a robot when it comes to national defense and military
strikes only makes sense although it would make even more sense if the planet worked
together and didn’t have conflict.
The MAARS or modular advanced armed robotic system is a perfect example, a military troop
that is a robot that is able to pull troops off the field, open doors and use it’s onboard
weapons.
Aerial drones are used everyday now too which saves lives of soldiers but also takes jobs.
Which job do you think will be hit the worst by automation in the next 20 years?