Rise of AI and job losses

We have seen an exponential growth and mindblowing innovations in the technology sector in last few decades. It seems like we have future filled with astonishingly exciting new technologies. And along with these new technologies we will have a bunch of new opportunities. Future looks bright, isn't it?

I have some concerns here. We have heard those jobs that did not exist a decade back such as vlogger (YouTuber), Social media manager, Uber-Driver,  App-Developer. etc. The technological advances brought us most of these new jobs. In this post, I want to talk about some of those jobs that we may see disappear due to the next leap in technology, which would be driven by artificial intelligence (AI).

According to a study done at Oxford University, 45% of all current jobs will disappear in the next decade with some of them being completely automated or at least enhanced so that only a fraction of the workforce is required.

Let's look at some of the jobs that will radically change in the upcoming years and you’re currently working in either of these sectors or industries, it might be a smart move to look for the better alternatives.

Vehicle/Automotive drivers:
Have you heard about Autodriving cars in the news? Yes, corporates are putting a plethora of money into these technologies and most of the primitive models are working smoothly. This means if your job consists in driving any type of machine, automobile or vehicle, soon,  you’ll be replaced by a bot.

Travel, transportation and logistics is a big industry in India. The annual cost spends for Logistics services are estimated at 14% of the GDP as the share of the total value of goods.  Indian logistics costs are estimated to be the highest in the world. (As per the Central Statistics Office. Government of India. (2006). National Account Statistics/CMIE. (2004).Public Finance. Economic Intelligence Service). Automation of this sector will solve many problems such as road accidents, environmental pollution, increasing traffic density.

The German government has already backed the technology and they’re betting hard on self-driving trucks. According to the famous car manufacturer, Tesla, their next generation of Tesla cars will be 100% autonomous. In the imminent future, driving a car will be similar to getting in an elevator. Just press the navigate button and it will take you to the spot.

People in this industry will have to reinvent themselves to remain employed.

Manufacturing workers:
With the beginning of the industrial revolution, most of the people moved to work in factories along with the machines that made lives and work easier.
Nowadays the manufacturing technology is so advance that machine is building the machines. For example, check how cars were built some half a century ago in the factories and compare it to how they are built today. Compare how much manpower is needed to build the car. In the past, a bunch of factory workers were working in tandem to build a final product on another hand, today, those workers are replaced by robotic arms.

Print media and publishers:
Is your subscription to your favourite newspaper still active? Or you prefer to read the news on your favourite mobile app? The newspaper is on the verge of dying. The internet is now replacing traditional media. you get the news via social media or via live streams.
Famous Forbes magazine, despite being such a powerful brand they’re on the verge of collapse. Information nowadays is free, thanks to the Internet and search engines.

Banker and cashiers:
Remember the days when jobs in the bank were in demand? Oops.. they are still in demand though, Total number of Applicants in SBI PO 2018 is 9.75 lakhs. For 2000 vacancies. On the other hand, SBI Clerk received 16.6 lakh applications against 8,300 clerical vacancies.

Mark my words, These jobs will be reduced significantly and most of these applications will have to find an alternative. Banks are becoming smart with advanced infrastructure. have you visited SBI INTOUCH branch? We’re not too distant from an entire takeover of the machines in this area. We visit ATMs to withdraw cash or simply make digital payments to avoid cash handling. We rarely go to the bank anymore. Mobile banking has replaced the traditional system effectively, we check out the balance on our smartphones, salaried people get their money deposited to their accounts automatically, without the need to manually and physically fill in a form. You can open a bank account to most banks with just AADHAAR.

Supermarkets products are RFID tagged. This improves the shopping experience significantly. Remember that decade-old IBM RFID commercial? The technology soon becomes part of everyone's life. We are not too far from the operator free supermarkets where billing will be done automatically. In Fact, Amazon Go is a similar pilot project with 0 humans involved. Just walk in, select what you need and walk out. billing will be done automatically on your card.

And since AI cashiers can work 24/7 there is no need to shut the store.

Restaurant workers:
Do you know how KFC, McDonalds make their burger cutlets and bread?

Fast food jobs are could be the simplest to automate. When the wave of automation gets government approvals we will see most of the automated fast food stores with swiping machines. Do you have a tea/coffee machine at your workplace? That's just the beginning.

I recently visited a popular restaurant in Pune with my colleagues, a very Interesting feature of this restaurant service was that you can order food from your mobile.  The best part of the app menu was the rates of some food items were not fixed and it varied based on the demand and there were live discounts also. It was something unique, your placed order would directly go to the kitchen of the restaurant.  No need to assign any manager to take orders.

Booking agents:
When was the last time you visited the Airport or Railway to buy a physical ticket? Do you go to the box office to buy movie tickets? How do you pay your cellular, electricity bill? Did you visit the insurance office to pay a premium for your policy?
Most of the payments and transaction are done online and there is no need for a 3rd person to do this job. IT infrastructure takes care of it. No need to invest money in payment kiosks and assign a person for it. Soon you will be able to book a table at a restaurant with an automated phone call. Check out Google Duplex: AI assistant call demo.

Stock Traders:
Late 2015s, According to Bloomberg analysts only 10% of the stocks traded on the daily basis, worldwide, are traded by real people and investors. The rest are bots!
Automation has an edge against the traditional traders as they are quick. In India Automation in trading is not legal yet. Most of the trading decisions are based on Technical and Fundamental analysis, which nowadays done by sophisticated algorithms. Technologies such as Machine Learning and Neural Networks are helping in making profitable decisions.
These algos are currently assisting traders to analysis the market data. But soon these bots will take over the human traders.

Medical professionals, Accountants & Tax preparers:
AI is superb at automating mundane and repetitive tasks and what do accountants do? organise the unprocessed data to make it comprehensible. That's where the algorithms work best. That’s why AI engineers are going after accountants, lawyers and medical professionals. Collecting data and accessing it to draw a conclusion based on existing data that how machine learning works.
In the case of medical data, collecting the data for diagnosis has become very easy with technologies such as blood sugar monitoring devices, heart rate monitoring wrist watches, blood pressure monitors. Don't be surprised if you soon see smart toilets, which will analyse your poop to check your health on regular basis. Doctors are now getting a digital assistant to guide them in prescribing the best medicines based on patient-specific requirements. DNA profiling for healthcare services will soon help doctors to diagnose every individual in depth.
In near future, you may not need to visit these professionals unless the problems are too complicated. Rest will be handled with some software on your phone.

Construction workers and farmers:
In the past, people manually did a lot of construction and farming work. Currently, these people heavily rely on machines. You may want to see some automation work done in the agricultural sector. These innovating farming ideas are reducing manpower drastically and the output has also improved.
Farming was huge when it came to employment numbers back in the day! This has changed dramatically.
In developing countries such as Indian, farming is a human-labour intensive job, but on a macro level, on big land farming areas this has already been automated and it required few specially trained individuals, whose job is to operate heavy machinery via wireless connections from the comforts of the office. Drones and satellite imagery are assisting with maintenance work. Really soon, specialized hardware and trucks will be harvesting and planting in a small fraction of time with self-driving AI.
Future farmers would be ranked as a banker or hedge fund managers since there will be only a handful of people working on the field rest will be bots.

In a developing country like India, there are millions of people working construction sector and if the technology comes to replace most of the manual work these people will either have to upgrade or lose the job. Just visit any modern construction site, you will see most of the heavy task has been replaced by machines. From excavation to mixing cement-concrete, to painting the building almost every task requires the machine to work along with human labour. Soon you will see the exceptional machines that work autonomously. A good example of such technology is tunnel boring machines.
On top of all this because technology is getting more efficient and affordable. Developers demand more machines and slightly more specialized workers to use those machines.

Finally, most of us will have the impact of these AI enhancements on our jobs. The only solution to deal with is, keep upgrading your skill set until some AI bot can't learn it. This post is not a prophecy, but just a rethought.

What do you think? what other jobs will be taken by automation?

"The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment." - Warren Bennis.