Are you a robot? No? Do you build robots? No?
Well, I’m sorry to say that you are fucked.
Either start saving money now, go back to school, or commit a really heinous, poorly covered up murder so you won’t ever have to worry about rent and food again.
Because the robots are coming to take our jobs, and they are coming in hot. A new study by the World Economic Forum concludes that by 2020, five million human jobs will be replaced by robots. From Bloomberg:
Over five million jobs will be lost by 2020 as a result of developments in genetics, artificial intelligence, robotics and other technological change, according to World Economic Forum research.
About 7 million jobs will be lost and 2 million gained as a result of technological change in 15 major developed and emerging economies, WEF founder Klaus Schwab and managing board member Richard Samans said in “The Future of Jobs.” The findings are taken from a survey of 15 economies covering about 1.9 billion workers, or about 65 percent of the world’s total workforce.
In fairness, robots are really fucking good at jobs. Look at this one, whose job it is to organize batteries.
Could you do that? Not a damn chance. It’d be a fucking waste putting you in charge of organizing batteries. So start learning something else.
“To prevent a worst-case scenario — technological change accompanied by talent shortages, mass unemployment and growing inequality — reskilling and upskilling of today’s workers will be critical,” the authors said. “It is simply not possible to weather the current technological revolution by waiting for the next generation’s workforce to become better prepared.”
If you do get retrained in something, don’t do it in a field that robots will likely dominate.
Administrative and office jobs will account for two-thirds of the losses, with “routine white-collar office functions at risk of being decimated,” and there will be gains in computer, mathematical, architecture and engineering-related fields.
It sounds bleak, but you can always fall back on committing a murder. Robots will never take the job of being a human prisoner, although getting a robot to serve your time would be pretty sweet.
[Via End Time Headline]