The machine revolution is coming, and it's coming fast.
Top economists and engineers are warning us that many jobs will be replaced by machines
because they are cheaper to operate and more consistently reliable.
According to a study by the University of Oxford, 47% of total U.S. employment is at
risk with the regularization of automated processes (i.e. computerized machines) being
used.
A machine can break, but it can't be hurt, and it can malfunction, but it doesn't get
sick.
A.I.
will be able to analyze a lot more data more quickly than a conventional analyst, whether
it be someone analyzing the stock market or a doctor analyzing test results.
The future is uncertain, and there's nothing we can do about that, but we can give you
a heads up with our list of the top ten predicted jobs to disappear by 2050
First on our list is one of the more self-evident jobs that will disappear.
Postal carrier.
The days of carrier pigeons delivering messages from one castle to the next are long gone,
we had our bird revolution somewhere along the line, but these coming decades it is the
typical mail carrier who has to dodge crazy dogs, and bring you the latest toy you bought
yourself.
With Amazon drone, self-driving cars, and e-mail, songs like “Please Mr. Postman”
won't have any meaning as people are born into a world where your shipment comes to
your door with by driverless car and scans your fingertips for identification as you
sign a document on a touch screen.
Believe it or not, farmers will cease to exist in the way we think of them.
Like Christopher Nolan's film “Interstellar”, farming will take on a more scientific bent.
Due the increase in agricultural technology, the need for manual labor will decrease as
farming becomes more of a machines operator or engineering job than a job requiring strenuous
activity.
It'll become a job about programming or repairing machines and performing tests to increase
growth conditions.
The job that's probably already experiencing it's significant decrease in employment would
have to be the factory worker... gone will be the days of receiving shipments and fork
lifting each pallet one-by-one.
Gone will be the days where humans will be responsible for piling boxes on each other,
or sorting them out by eye.
Robots will eventually be able to handle any tasks that involve identifying or organizing
stock.
They call this “lights out manufacturing” and it's expected to be one of the major disruptions
of automation.
Another trend we're beginning to see with McDonald's self-serve system is the death
of the fast food worker.
Pretty soon you won't be seeing young students serving your hamburgers or coffee at your
favorite fast food shops.
Touch screens will replace your hosts, and a robotic assembly in the back will put your
burger and fries together.
We think they might keep one person available, like hire models or something to stand there,
or maybe have some on-staff engineer in case there's a problem.
Either way, the staff is going to see a noticeable shrinkage.
All this stuff about the fast food worker applies to the retail cashier.
Companies like Wal-mart already try to reduce the amount of employees they need, so we can
be sure they're going to jump on the opportunity of computerized automation.
Maybe the whole shopping experience of browsing through aisles will be replaced by going up
to a giant screen that knows you by name, and can suggest you items based on your Facebook
activity and Google searches...
Just a few decades ago, it was said at Bell Labs that there were strong reasons why English
would be too difficult to analyze “phoneme by phoneme, word by word” due to the different
speeds at which people talk... and a few years later, the Soviets developed technology which
would begin to minimize the difficulties.
By today's standard, speech recognition is an app you can download on your phone like
Siri, Google Now or Cortana, or even closed captioning software like in these videos.
When we imagine the logging industry, unless we're in it we probably imagine a bunch of
burly guys knocking down trees with their axes and plaid shirts yelling “Timber!”
Well, we've done our research and it's actually far more sophisticated than that.
Traditionally considered a dangerous job, now the possibility is for the “loggers”
to remotely control a machine that can cut-down and section a tree without anyone having to
get near it.
Paul Bunyan eat your heart out, your job might go to an engineer sipping coffee and eating
doughnuts a mile away from your machines.
This one will make a lot of book people sad.
Due to computers superior sorting abilities, and everything we've talked about involving
a self-serve system, librarians could soon be a thing of the past.
Instead of having someone to recommend you a book, there'll be some user-generated reviews,
and instead of bringing in your books late, you'll be texted a notification reminding
you to bring it back... or else.
This is assuming by that point we still use paper books.
Maybe they'll be banned and you'll be forced to upload Moby Dick to your iPad 15.
Every book is a journey, true, but there are also real journeys that can be had.
You can book a nice vacation on Sunday and hit your sun spot on Monday, for the week.
Travel agents used to be the personable, friendly intermediaries between you and your slice
of paradise., but now, with all the websites offering the cheapest possible deals, and
like we said before, user-generated reviews telling you where to and where not to go,
it's hardly surprising that travel agent will soon be a career choice of the past.
The last occupation on our list shouldn't surprise anyone.
We've already seen how apps like Uber and Lyft have shaken the taxi industry, so we
can only imagine how much further this industry gets shaken by self-driving cars.
Of course, it's not only the taxi industry that will see changes: pizza delivery is gonna
go, bus drivers are gonna go, the trucking industry and on and on, anything that requires
someone manually controlling a vehicle is likely to be controlled from a station, or
operated by artificial intelligence.
and when that would happen.
People have been speculating about advances in technology since recorded history, but
as we've seen, no one -- or very few -- are capable of predicting the outcomes.
If anything, people are likely to underestimate the time it takes for a technology to catch
on, or, the technology wasn't on their radar until everybody had one in their pocket.
So who knows?
We feel like we're on the cusp of many technologies such as an end to factory work in the western,
an end to cars with drivers, and so on, but how far will this technology take us?
How long will it take before we can have a meaningful conversation with a robot about
problem solving, or about dealing with your ex-girlfriend/boyfriend?
It may be impossible to say, but then again, maybe we'll design a robot to deal with making
those predictions for us.
So are you prepared to submit to your new machine masters?
Okay okay, these jobs might not ALL be gone by 2050.
Many places in the world won't have enough money to replace their systems, and will have
sufficient man-power to get things done for cheaper and faster.
And certain jobs like artists, scientists, computer programmers or anything else requiring
creativity will still be in demand, so if you're not already into those kinds of fields,
hopefully by 2050 you will have changed your mind.