[Art]

Artificial Intelligence Will Obliterate These Jobs By 2030
By Jonathan Vanian

November 19, 2019
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Cubicle workers. Shipping clerks. Loan processors.

“All gone,” Forrester vice president and principal consultant Huard Smith said in describing the impact of artificial intelligence on various professions by 2030.

Smith's list included a lot of repetitive, manual work that can be automated with machine-learning software. For instance, Forrester projects that 73% of all cubicle-related jobs—think clerical tasks like data entry—will be automated by 2030, equating to over 20 million jobs eliminated.

Location-based workers, which includes people who work as grocery store clerks, will also be severely impacted by A.I., Smith explained. About 38% of location-based jobs will be automated by 2030, eliminating about 29.9 million positions.

A.I.-powered job loss is already occurring in some job roles, he said, mentioning a grocery store that has eliminated five human jobs with the help of a robot that can scan products on shelves to track inventory. Only one human worker remains to restock the store.

If the next version of the inventory tracking robot can stock shelves, then the grocery store “won’t actually need anyone,” Smith said.   

And if you think that learning to code will give you an edge in the future, think again. Smith said that even software developers are at risk, because “coding is going to be automated.”

“So if you got kids in coding schools, you might keep them there [temporarily], but don’t tell them to stay,” Smith told the audience at an A.I. conference in Santa Clara, Calif. last week. “Get them into A.I., because coding isn’t going to be a job in the future.”

Company executives typically downplay the impact of A.I. on jobs and insist that A.I. will create new ones. But A.I. will wipe out 29% of all U.S. jobs while creating the equivalent of only 13%, Forrester projects.

Smith’s frank talk wasn’t meant to be a total downer, but was instead intended to create a sense of urgency about A.I.’s effect on jobs. Speaking to Fortune after his talk, Smith explained that company management should be candid with employees about the impact of machine learning on their jobs and invest heavily in corporate training programs.

U.S. workers are increasingly worried about A.I.’s potential negative effects on their jobs, and company managers need to take their concerns seriously by helping them adapt to the fast-changing world.

“They will bolt if they feel that you are just cost cutting,“ Smith said, referring to companies that are adopting machine learning.

"It will be a difficult 10 years and beyond, and the world doesn’t just stop by 2030, so buckle up," he warned.
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jonathan.vanian@fortune.com

[ivan.moony]

Which gives us an opportunity to reduce time of average working human shifts without reducing pay wages. That way we can do more of what we really want to do, not only what we need to do just to survive.

[Korrelan]

Most of the jobs mentioned in the article didn’t exist before the industrial revolution, it was the global change to machine automation that drove the economy and allowed companies to prosper.  People moved out of the countryside from scratching a living on the land to work in the factories, I know it wasn’t all sunshine and roses, but it kinda worked out in the end.

I can definitely see the ‘dumb/ narrow’ AI’s replacing a lot of menial jobs and anything that includes repetitive tasks, calculations, etc.

But hopefully it won’t be as bleak as portrayed, as Ivan said perhaps we are just ready for a general restructuring of how our society functions, or perhaps the influx of AI’s will generate different types of jobs.  In ten years time Ivan might be a machine psychiatrist, spending his days helping/ listening to AGI’s blub about how idiosyncratic humans are lol.

Perhaps the highly intelligent machines will figure out interstellar travel and all we humans will be employed building the star-ships… who knows lol.

The one thing for certain is it’s coming… and there is no stopping it, we either adapt or…

 

[HS]

That reminds me of the stockmarkert crash and the great depression. Physical resources were still there, but society was holding numbers in higher regard, and was impoverishing itself. Now here, essential tasks necessary for our survival will be getting done by robots, but we are stuck on the idea that we need to be doing them. As long as these things are getting done, resources are getting processed etc, things can be good for us, and probably better than before!

[ivan.moony]

Korr, consider that in my twisted mind, people who shake the world are not running just for more and more money. But these are just pink glasses on my nose. We, as a species, have to learn a lot more to reach the better future, which is certainly coming, whether we want it or not. I just keep a hope for our children who will potentially be in a position to judge us, while in the same time minding for better things to do, like trying to make this place worth of living.

[Art]

Think about it, we are schooled for a decade and a half (for a lot of folks), work some job for 20-40 years, retire from 62-to 66/68, then live for maybe 2 more decades (give or take), then die. What a wonderful existence, what a glorious way to spend one's life.

There are some who would think it quite unfair to pay people more for working less. That's not the way it's done. Well, in some industries, that is the way it's done and for varied reasons. Lots of roadwork can only be done at night during fewer traffic hours but the workers are often restricted on when they can be on the roadway or closing a lane of traffic, then they have to have their work completed and get everything picked up and be off of the road/have the lane(s) opened for the morning commute/rush hour. This breaks down to the workers getting paid for 8 hours but maybe only working for 5 or 6.

A similar convention applies for miners, scuba divers, underwater welders, people working in or around dangerous/toxic chemicals, etc.

There will come a day when people who end up working less will be paid a supplementary fee, sort of like a Basic Income allowance that many are up in arms again.

You can't ethically displace people without providing them an opportunity to train or perform an equally substantial task for employment. A person needs to feel a measure of worth and to be appreciated goes a long way as well.

According to the article, the day is rapidly approaching and there is no stopping it.

Earth's population at the Great Depression was around 2 billion. Think about industries, jobs, lack of technology, etc.
Earth's population in 2019 is at 7.7 billion...a more than 7 fold increase in people. Are there jobs, industries, food, skills, housing, medical environments to care for them all? It seems that Earth gains a billion more people every 10 - 12 years. We will one day reach the point of HAVING to explore & move to new habitats, whether under the oceans, in or on the mountains, in or under the deserts or perhaps on new planets that can be colonized. Time will tell for some of you, perhaps.

[WriterOfMinds]

You can't ethically displace people without providing them an opportunity to train or perform an equally substantial task for employment. A person needs to feel a measure of worth and to be appreciated goes a long way as well.

A human being should feel a measure of worth in existing as a human being.  There's only shame in not working if it means you're forcing somebody else to work on your behalf.

Are there jobs ... to care for them all?

Resources like land are finite, but the more people you have, the more needs you have and therefore the more jobs you have.  For every so many kids, you have to create a teacher job, otherwise parents will be up in arms about large class sizes and lack of individual attention.  If more people come to your restaurant, you'll have to hire more servers.  Etc.  If we run out of jobs, it will happen because we somehow increase the human race's per-capita capacity to provide services beyond its per-capita capacity to consume them; the absolute population numbers do not matter.

We will one day reach the point of HAVING to explore & move to new habitats, whether under the oceans, in or on the mountains, in or under the deserts or perhaps on new planets that can be colonized.

Or the reproductive rate will decline and earth's population will level off.  I thought that was already in progress.

[AndyGoode]

Since the article is talking about 2030, presumably it is talking about applied AI--a continuation of current trends--not AGI. Around the 2030-2040 time frame governments will seriously need to start considering UBI--Universal Basic Income [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income]--to compensate for the major cultural/social shift brought on by that new technology. At the very least, jobs will shift to chores that only humans can do well--customer service, creativity in science or art, machine maintenance, politics, prostitution, etc. In the longer term, when AGI hits, there will be no more chance of continuing the existing model of many fundamentals--economics, jobs, education, science, transportation, etc.--and finally mankind can pursue its own pleasures/goals unfettered. At that time population control will become a very serious issue, since you can't have everything--unlimited reproduction with unlimited lifespans and unlimited space per person. Personally I don't believe we'll ever see that final, golden era, since by then the power structure on the planet will be threatened into taking drastic actions to maintain the power status quo.