Experts predict robots will take over 30% of our jobs by 2025 — and white-collar jobs aren't immune
Experts predict robots will take over 30% of our jobs by
2025 — and white-collar jobs aren't immune
Researchers anticipate that by 2029 robots will have
reached human levels of intelligence.
By Kathleen Elkins
May 1, 2015, 11:15 AM
There's a BakeBot robot whipping up fresh cookies at MIT;
hospitals are now employing medical robots to assist their doctors; and a robot
named Baxter can beat any human at the popular logic game Connect Four, among
many other tasks.
"Historically what we thought was that robots would
do things that were the three D's: dangerous, dirty, and dull," explains
Ryan Calo, professor at University of Washington School of Law with an
expertise in robotics. "Over time, the range of things that robots can do
has extended."
Their abilities will only continue to expand. Ray
Kurzweil, director of engineering at Google, anticipates that by 2029 robots
will have reached human levels of intelligence.
Many people fear a jobless future — and their anxiety is
not unwarranted: Gartner, an information technology research and advisory firm,
predicts that one-third of jobs will be replaced by software, robots, and smart
machines by 2025.
Artificial intelligence and robots are not just
challenging blue-collar jobs; they are starting to take over white-collar
professions as well. Financial and sports reporters, online marketers,
surgeons, anesthesiologists, and financial analysts are already in danger of
being replaced by robots.
While one camp of experts predict that several unlucky
Americans will be pushed out of work in the near future, others argue that this
increase in computing prowess will simply eliminate old jobs and introduce new
ones, resulting in a net-zero effect — or even an increase in jobs. New
technology means new products and services, they argue, as we saw during the
Industrial Revolution.
Experts are calling this movement the "Second
Machine Age," as it is comparable to what we saw 200 years ago with the
invention of the steam engine and the machine age that ensued.
The machines of the Industrial Revolution overcame the
limitations of human muscle, while the robots and artificial intelligence of
today are overcoming the limitations of our individual minds.
While the Industrial Revolution ultimately led to more
employment opportunities, economists are heavily debating whether or not we
will see the same result in the aftermath of the Second Machine Age.
The past can be helpful in predicting the future, but
there are no guarantees.
While it is hard to fully anticipate the consequences of
this major societal shift towards intelligent machines, we can find comfort in
the fact that we still have a leg up on robots for certain jobs: ones that
require judgment, creative thinking, and human interaction.
"For a long time, artificial intelligence has been
better than us at highly structured, bounded tasks," Calo explains.
"What it has not been good at, and likely won't be good at anytime soon,
are the more unstructured tasks."
Computer scientists generally agree that manipulating
language — cracking jokes and detecting sarcasm — is beyond the capability of
machines; with such rapid advancements however, an intelligent machine could be
writing an article about humans before we know it.
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