{"id":2402,"date":"2020-04-24T03:14:45","date_gmt":"2020-04-24T00:14:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kusuaks7\/?p=2007"},"modified":"2023-12-14T10:52:32","modified_gmt":"2023-12-14T10:52:32","slug":"when-pundits-say-that-robots-will-take-our-jobs-remember-these-4-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/future-of-work\/when-pundits-say-that-robots-will-take-our-jobs-remember-these-4-things\/","title":{"rendered":"When Pundits Say That Robots Will Take Our Jobs, Remember These 4 Things"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n

A\u00a02019 study<\/a>\u00a0by the Brookings Institution found that over 61% of jobs will be affected by automation. That comes on the heels of a\u00a02017 report<\/a>\u00a0from the McKinsey Global Institute that found that 51% of total working hours and $2.7 trillion dollars in wages are highly susceptible to automation and a\u00a02013 Oxford study<\/a>\u00a0that found 47% of jobs will be replaced.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n

The future looks pretty grim indeed until you start looking at jobs that have already been automated. Fly-by-wire was introduced in 1968, but today we\u2019re facing a\u00a0massive pilot shortage<\/a>. The number of\u00a0bank tellers has doubled<\/a>\u00a0since ATMs were introduced. Overall, the US is facing a\u00a0massive labor shortage<\/a>.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n

In fact, although\u00a0the workforce has doubled since 1970<\/a>, labor participation rates have\u00a0risen by more than 10%<\/a>\u00a0since then. Everywhere you look, as automation increases, so does the demand for skilled humans. So the challenge ahead isn\u2019t so much finding work for humans, but to prepare humans to do the types of work that will be in demand in the years to come.<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t

\n

1. Automation Doesn\u2019t Replace Jobs, It Replaces Tasks<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n

To understand the disconnect between all the studies that seem to be predicting the elimination of jobs and the increasingly dire labor shortage, it helps to look a little deeper at what those studies are actually measuring. The truth is that they don\u2019t actually look at the rate of jobs being created or lost, but tasks that are being automated. That\u2019s something very different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To understand why, consider the legal industry, which is rapidly being automated. Basic activities like legal discovery are now\u00a0largely done by algorithms<\/a>. Services like\u00a0LegalZoom<\/a>\u00a0automate basic filings. There are even artificial intelligence systems that can\u00a0predict the outcome<\/a>\u00a0of a court case better than a human can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So it shouldn\u2019t be surprising that many experts predict gloomy days ahead for lawyers. Yet the number of lawyers in the US has\u00a0increased by 15%<\/a>\u00a0since 2008 and it\u2019s not hard to see why. People don\u2019t hire lawyers for their ability to hire cheap associates to do discovery, file basic documents or even, for the most part, to go to trial. In large part, they want someone they can trust to advise them.<\/p>\n\n\n

In a similar way we don\u2019t expect bank tellers to process transactions any more, but to help us with things that we can\u2019t do at an ATM. As the retail sector becomes more automated, demand for\u00a0e-commerce workers is booming. Go to a highly automated Apple Store and you\u2019ll find far more workers than at a traditional store, but we expect them to do more than just ring us up.<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t

2. When Tasks Become Automated, The Become Commoditized<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n

Let\u2019s think back to what a traditional bank looked like before ATMs or the Internet. In a typical branch, you would see a long row of tellers there to process deposits and withdrawals. Often, especially on Fridays when workers typically got paid, you would expect to see long lines of people waiting to be served.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In those days, tellers needed to process transactions quickly or the people waiting in line would get annoyed. Good service was fast service. If a bank had slow tellers, people would leave and go to one where the lines moved faster. So training tellers to process transactions efficiently was a key competitive trait.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, however, nobody waits in line at the bank because processing transactions is highly automated. Our paychecks are usually sent electronically. We can pay bills online and get cash from an ATM. What\u2019s more, these aren\u2019t considered competitive traits, but commodity services. We expect them as a basic requisite of doing business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the same way, we don\u2019t expect real estate agents to find us a house or travel agents to book us a flight or find us a hotel room. These are things that we used to happily pay for, but today we expect something more.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t

\n

3. When Things Become Commodities, Value Shifts Elsewhere<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n

In 1900,\u00a030 million people<\/a>\u00a0in the United States were farmers, but by 1990 that number had fallen to\u00a0under 3 million<\/a>\u00a0even as the population more than tripled. So, in a manner of speaking, 90% of American agriculture workers lost their jobs, mostly due to automation. Still, the twentieth century became an era of unprecedented prosperity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re in the midst of a similar transformation today. Just as our ancestors toiled in the fields, many of us today spend much of our time doing rote, routine tasks. However, as two economists from MIT\u00a0explain in a paper<\/a>, the jobs of the future are not white collar or blue collar, but those focused on non-routine tasks, especially those that involve other humans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consider the case of bookstores. Clearly, by automating the book buying process, Amazon disrupted superstore book retailers like Barnes & Noble and Borders. Borders filed for bankruptcy in 2011 and was liquidated later that same year. Barnes & Noble managed to survive, but has been declining for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet a\u00a0study at Harvard Business School<\/a>\u00a0found that small independent bookstores are thriving by adding value elsewhere, such as providing community events, curating titles and offering personal recommendations to customers. These are things that are hard to do well at a big box retailer and virtually impossible to do online.<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t

\n\n

4. Value Is Shifting From Cognitive Skills To Social Skills<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n

20 or 30 years ago, the world was very different. High value work generally involved retaining information and manipulating numbers. Perhaps not surprisingly, education and corporate training programs were focused on teaching those skills<\/a> and people would build their careers on performing well on knowledge and quantitative tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, however, an average teenager has more access to information and computing power than a typical large enterprise had a generation ago, so knowledge retention and quantitative ability have largely been automated and devalued. High value work has\u00a0shifted from cognitive skills to social skills<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consider that the journal\u00a0Nature<\/em>\u00a0has found<\/a>\u00a0that the average scientific paper today has four times as many authors as one did in 1950 and the work they are doing is\u00a0far more interdisciplinary<\/a>\u00a0and done at\u00a0greater distances<\/a>\u00a0than in the past. So even in highly technical areas, the ability to communicate and collaborate effectively is becoming an important skill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are some things that a machine will never do. Machines will never strike out at a Little League game, have their hearts broken or see their children born. That makes it difficult, if not impossible, for machines to relate to humans as well as a human can. The future of work is humans collaborating with other humans to design work for machines.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The future looks pretty grim indeed until you start looking at jobs that have already been automated. There are some things that a machine will never do. Machines will never strike out at a Little League game, have their hearts broken or see their children born. That makes it difficult, if not impossible, for machines to relate to humans as well as a human can. The future of work is humans collaborating with other humans to design work for machines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":622,"featured_media":8179,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[108],"ppma_author":[3337],"class_list":["post-2402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-future-of-work","tag-future-of-work"],"authors":[{"term_id":3337,"user_id":622,"is_guest":0,"slug":"greg-satell","display_name":"Greg Satell","avatar_url":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/medium_09100e21-0736-4ca7-ac55-7140c8c4d9d2-150x150.jpg","author_category":"","user_url":"https:\/\/www.gregsatell.com\/%20","last_name":"Satell","first_name":"Greg","job_title":"","description":"Greg Satell is an international keynote speaker, adviser and bestselling author of Cascades: How to Create a Movement that Drives Transformational Change. His previous effort, Mapping Innovation, was selected as one of the best business books of 2017. You can learn more about Greg on his website, GregSatell.com<\/a> and follow him on Twitter<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/622"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2402"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=2402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}