The robot-proof job opportunity of the 21st Century? 'Engineering bottleneck' expert (Part 2)
Why some jobs will be child's play for robots (Click to read the Oxford paper)
Want a robot-safe job? Start getting good at things machines are bad at. Fast.
As I was telling you the other day in part 1, robots are gainin on us fast. I'm really worried about how this is going to impact our society (see 'A billion useless people.') And the folks at Grow asked me to write about this. (Click here to read my stories at Grow.) The next two grafs are to get the newbies up to date from part 1; after that, this story explains how and why some jobs will escape the coming robot coup.
Plenty of folks believe these dire predictions are overblown. After all, America was an agricultural economy in the 19th Century, with some 80 percent of the population working on farms. It’s less than 2 percent now. Not only did the American economy survive, it thrived. One school of economics and labor history holds that mechanization actually frees up humans from rote tasks, giving them more time and energy to be entrepreneurial and creative. The elimination of poor-paying fast-food worker jobs will be a good thing, this argument suggests, as those workers will be pushed into better jobs.
While that might hold true in the long term, in the short term, there's going to be a lot of pain and struggle. The main difference between earlier labor disruptions and what's happening today is time. Americans had generations to adjust to the shift away from agriculture. Today, they might have a decade, or less, to adjust to the robot age. It took nearly fifty years after the introduction of the production automobile for half of Americans to own one. It took only six years after the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 for half of Americans to own a smartphone. Things change fast now.
In other words, it’s unlikely we'll be able to retrain American's workforce so fast to take on robot-proof jobs.
A report by McKinsey earlier this year offered a more balanced, and less dire view, of the issues. It said that while machines will eliminate many tasks -- like flipping burgers -- they won't necessarily eliminate entire jobs.
"Certain activities are more likely to be automated, requiring entire business processes to be transformed, and jobs performed by people to be redefined, much like the bank teller’s job was redefined with the advent of ATMs," it said.
McKinsey found that as many as 45 percent of activities performed by individuals can be automated. This includes not just low-wage work, but some work done by executives and other high earners, too – like paperwork demands on financial managers and physicians. Machines will free up those workers to spend additional time on more important issues, like managing people and imagining new products.
"Fewer than 5 percent of occupations can be entirely automated using current technology," the report says. "However, about 60 percent of occupations could have 30 percent or more of their constituent activities automated."
In other words, people who have value over and above the rote tasks they do every day might actually thrive in a robot-heavy workplace; but those whose jobs are -- let say it, BORING -- are in big trouble.
So before the great robot replacement arrives, what can you do to make sure you end up on the right side of that divide? The McKinsey report offers some solid clues.
"Capabilities such as creativity and sensing emotions are core to the human experience and also difficult to automate. The amount of time that workers spend on activities requiring these capabilities, though, appears to be surprisingly low," it says. "Just 4 percent of the work activities across the US economy require creativity at a median human level of performance. Similarly, only 29 percent of work activities require a median human level of performance in sensing emotion."
Work in the 21st Century will be all about creativity and connection. Humans will be useful only when they do jobs that machines can't do, and at least for the moment, creative thinking and sensing emotion are still beyond the grasp of robot programmers. In fact, it might be useful to think like a hacker: What's the best way to frustrate a computer? To throw a monkey wrench into an otherwise predictable process? Those kinds of tasks are the hardest to program.
The Oxford study puts this concept in academic language: it calls them "engineering bottlenecks." You should think of them as opportunity. For example: It's easy for a machine to ring up your purchases and take your money. It's much harder to sense from your facial expression that you haven't found something you want, and help you find it in the store. Find an engineering bottleneck, and get good at it.
Your ability to sense human emotions might be the first entry on your LinkedIn page in 2025.
The Oxford study, most helpfully, undertook the arduous task of ranking 700 professions from most to least robot-proof.
Near the top of the list of safe jobs are plenty of medical-oriented professions -- therapists, dentists, audiologists. Elementary school teachers are there, too. And thank goodness for that.
Certain physical jobs, like occupational therapists or mechanics, are fairly safe also.
On the other hand, if you sit at a desk all day, Oxford has bad news for you. Tax preparers, insurance claim adjusters, loan officers, credit analysts, budget analysts, and title examiners are among the most at-risk. If it helps ease the blow, telemarketers don't have much of a future, either.
Any wise worker should take a peek at the list right now, but you should already have some idea how automate-able your job is. If you can make something from nothing, your creativity will carry you through the coming disruption. But if your job is just to move around things others have made, it's time get your head out of the sand and stretch those creative muscles. Fast.
The Oxford list (Click for more - PDF. Scroll to bottom)
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