The Future of Your Job

As some point it will be cheaper for a company to automate a vast majority of the jobs in the world. This isn't just sectors like farming, manufacturing, and retail, but almost every sector of employment out there. The combination of flexible robotics and enhanced AI will eventually create a technology that can do your job (and do it better than you).  I am currently reading, Rise of Robots by Martin Ford, which delved into many of these issues.  The book is probably about 10x longer than it needs to be to make the same point, but that point is critically important to the future of our economic system.
One thing the book didn't include (I'm 80% through) is a calculator of when it makes sense for an industry to automate any job.  For example, there is the cost of developing, building and maintaining the technology to replace everyone with a certain job, viewed against the current costs of a human doing that work (salary, healthcare, management).  If you have a common job (something in which a lot of people have that same job), you are more likely to be automated.  However, if you have a very low-paying job, that might actually make automation unlikely (this has been used as a argument against raising the minimum wage).

I thought there should be a simple formula to figure if your job will be automated, and so I created one.  Stay tuned to see the answer and for the dramatic conclusion of this topic in my next post.

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