Will AI Take My Job?

As I mentioned in my last post, 38% of jobs in the U.S. are at risk of being replaced by artificial intelligence over the next 15 years. That is a terrifying statistic for many people, and often leaves people to be afraid of artificial intelligence. I think that the key to humans thriving and working alongside artificial intelligence is for us to truly understand it, and to make sure we know what we’re good at that AI can’t do.

This article will look at the industries that are most likely to be impacted by the technology — I would also like to mention that the technology will create a lot of jobs, but it is always easier to imagine the jobs that technology will make redundant as opposed to the jobs and economic growth that it can create.

The Facts

This infographic by PwC is based on an analysis of tasks from over 200,000 jobs across 29 countries to assess what the potential of automation may be over the next 20 years.

The report dives more deeply into what industries will be most affected by AI and automation in general, and unsurprisingly, the transport industry is the most at risk.

This massive difference between the transport industry and other jobs is largely due to the shear amount of resources being put into autonomous vehicles by companies such as Waymo, Aptiv, Tesla, and more. It is clear though that many other industries will see a huge impact by the mid-2030s, with roughly 30% of jobs at risk of automation. Another deciding factor of whether a person’s job will be automated is a person’s level of education:

There is a very clear trend based on this demographic: high demographic jobs will be at a much smaller risk of automation, with only 10% being at risk by the mid-2030s. This again makes sense as the jobs that artificial intelligence create will likely be jobs that require skills in STEM related subjects.

Is this all certain?

No — these figures could be wrong for multiple reasons: for one, there are ethical questions to be considered. What happens if an autonomous vehicle knocks someone over and seriously injures or kills them?

There are also multiple technological and economic constraints — it’s one thing to have AI technology built and functioning but integrating it to society will propose a variety of technical and economic challenges. For example, companies will need to weigh up the initial cost of the technology and its long-term benefits — because it is so new, it will be hard for companies to accurately predict the savings that implementing this technology will cause.

I will further dive into the constraints surrounding the implementation of artificial intelligence in a further post, with a strong focus on ethics and the costs.

What can I do to secure my job?

I’m not an expert on AI, and honestly, I’m not sure how exactly you can future-proof yourself — in fact it is probably impossible to completely do so. That said, based on what I have read, there are a few things that you can do that seem logical:

• Keep educating yourself

Given the statistics, it is crucial to continuously educate yourself. If they are right, only 10% of jobs that require a high level of education will be replaced, but almost 45% of jobs that require a low level of education will be at risk of being replaced by AI/automation in general. Again, this is a topic that I want to focus on in a lot more detail and I will be writing multiple articles on it over the coming months.

• Learn a STEM subject

To dive more deeply, learning a STEM subject could be extremely beneficial. In their report, PwC state that AI, robotics and other forms of smart automation has the potential to contribution $15 trillion to the global GDP. These jobs that are created will likely require strong technical skills, therefore if you want to future-proof yourself it might be a good idea to learn these skills. I’ll post a link to some online platforms where you can learn to code, as well as learn a lot of other skills.

• Improve your soft skills

Jack Ma, a famous figure in both technology and education stated that “Only by changing our education can our children compete with machines”. He believes that we need to teach our children things like independent thinking, teamwork, music, painting and art.

To Conclude

While I agree that creative thinking is extremely important and can set humans apart in an age where AI has such a big role in society, I think it is more important that we focus on learning a mix of soft skills, and advanced technical concepts. Some platforms that I’d recommend to learn technical skills from scratch are:

EdX

You can read the full report from PwC here — I would highly recommend it if you’re interested in AI!