Automation: A look at exactly how robots will take your job.

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You may have heard of or seen recent reports that 50% of the Global Workforce is destined for the unemployment line. Most of those reports are based on an article out of the MIT Technology Review entitled Report Suggests Nearly Half of U.S. Jobs Are Vulnerable to Computerization.

That article is making such informed claims based on data from a study out of the University of Oxford Engineering Sciences Department, A copy of which I’ve obtained, Which examined no less than 702 detailed occupations and assessed the likelihood those jobs would be made obsolete in the near future, Or as they call it the “probability of computerization using a Gaussian process classifier”

As much fun as sifting thru probabilities is, You really need to do no more than look at the world around you to see that Automation is coming, Full steam ahead.

Many of you have heard of Google’s Driverless Autonomous car, But have you heard of the ones by Toyota, Audi, Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, General Motors and Nissan? Expect to see driverless cars on the road soon. They’ve been legal to ‘drive’ in at least 4 US States since 2013 (Nevada, Florida, California, and Michigan). In Europe, cities in Belgium, France, Italy and the UK have pilot programs in place to test driverless cars. Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain are also testing driverless cars, not allowing them legally on their roadways yet.

If you’ve seen one driverless car, You’ve seen them all. But one of the offerings from Mercedes-Benz is especially unique in that it is a Self-Driving Semi-Truck Transport, A staple of the global transportation infrastructure.

One of the offerings from Audi is also notable in that it is making self-driving cars go fast! 240km/hr you say? Sure. Turns at 130km/hr? No problem.

Most of you probably aren’t in the market for a Semi-Truck or an Audi supercar. For businesses like Taxi Cab services and just regular people wanting a car there is consumer level offerings such as Google car which I’ll include here for good measure

Indeed Taxi Cab companies are already expressing interest in self-driving fleets

“Following the unveiling of Google’s new self-driving cars yesterday, taxi firm Uber has said it could replace all of its drivers with autonomous vehicles. CEO Travis Kalanick admitted the technology would keep costs down, and these savings could then be passed on to its customers. Speaking at the Code Conference in California, Kalanick said: ‘The reason Uber could be expensive is because you’re not just paying for the car – you’re paying for the other dude in the car. ‘When there’s no other dude in the car, the cost of taking an Uber anywhere becomes cheaper than owning a vehicle.’” End of the chatty cabbie? Uber plans to eventually replace all its drivers with self-driving cars

Maybe you don’t drive a cab, or a transport truck or a bus for living. Maybe you’re a cashier at multinational mega-franchises such as McDonalds, Tim Hortons, Home Depot or Walmart? Don’t worry. Automation has got you covered as well! As cries for a $15/hr minimum wage increase, Expect to see more of these at your checkouts in response.

McDonalds Self-Order Touch Kiosk

Tim Hortons Self-Order Touch Kiosk

Walmart Self-Checkout

Home Depot Self-Checkout

You don’t work in transportation or customer service? Perhaps you work on a farm? Gone are the days of fertilizing your crops or laying down cover seed by tractor.

“It uses both GPS and LIDAR to navigate with great precision and little in the way of operator intervention. It handles two corn rows at a time without collateral damage to growing plants. It collects data during operation which the farmer can then analyze to determine how to improve crop yields. Applying fertilizer using a tractor-attached applicator is less exact and often leads to crop damage to the top of the corn plants which reduces yield.

Rowbot’s first practical test this summer involved fertilizing 20.2 hectares (50 acres) of corn at a cost of under $25.00 per hectare ($10 per acre) not including fertilizer. The smaller footprint of Rowbot means arable fields can be exploited to the maximum especially when you consider that future iterations of Rowbot will be multifunctional including doing chores like cover seeding.” Rowbot Robot Tends to Farmers’ Fields

Tech Demo

See it in action on an actual Farm

Another award winning offering looking to make farming that much easier with that many less people is a concept project out of the University of Sydney called Ladybird. Gizmodo reports

“The automation of on-farm processes is poised to play a decisive role in minimising input and maximising output of future agriculture,” Dr James Underwood, Senior Research Fellow from the university’s Australian Centre for Field Robotics, told ABC Australia. “Automation can help to increase efficiency and yield, by having many of the manual tasks of farming performed by specially designed agricultural robotic devices.”

The roving robotic platform, toting a curved shell of photovoltaic plates, was designed specifically for monitoring environmental variables and plant health on large farm plots. It measures soil quality and nutrient loads, monitors plant development, and detects and identifies a wide number of pests.

The “Ladybird” was designed and built specifically for the vegetable industry with the aim of creating a ground robot with supporting intelligent software and the capability to conduct autonomous farm surveillance, mapping, classification, and detection for a variety of different vegetables.

..

Secondly, you can use it at night at 2 o’clock in the morning and go out and do an insect survey, so things like cutworm popping out at night time, slugs, worms, things like that. Instead of getting out of bed at 3 o’clock in the morning and wandering around with a torch and looking at about five square metres, this thing could do two or three hectares at night and then in the morning you can just see what you’ve got.” A Solar-Powered Ladybug That Might Just Save Global Agriculture

Not a farmer, Maybe you work in a warehouse. Maybe you’re even Forklift Certified? Meet Warehouse Automation.

The workforce sees a dramatic reduction, But it’s not a completely human-less operation. Those that used to drive a forklift get cut in numbers by 5/6 and will instead become order packers.

Kiva at Automate 2011 in Chicago

Kiva Systems Warehouse Automation at Quiet Logistics

Walmart is large enough to innovate on their own as I’ve previously shown. Given their incredible dominance in the market of selling just about everything. When Walmart does something, The rest of the retail industry across multiple spectrum’s quickly follows suit, adapts, or gets purchased by someone who will. TechCrunch reports.

“Walmart To Go, the retailer’s on-demand shopping service offering home delivery of general merchandise, including in some cases, groceries, is expanding its test in the Denver market today to also include a local pick-up option. Denver area customers will now be able to order their groceries online, then pick up at a nearby store – without having to set foot inside the store.

Instead, customers will pull up to a designated pick-up spot on the side of the store, as directed. Or, in the case of those stores where a drive-through pharmacy is available, they’ll pick up their groceries from the pharmacy window. Depending on the location, they’ll either dial a phone number or enter an order into a touchscreen kiosk to let Walmart staff know they’ve arrived. Then it’s only a matter of popping the trunk.” Walmart Begins Testing Online Grocery Shopping With Local Store Pickup Option In Denver

I could go on and on about how many jobs are going to no longer exist, but this article is getting a little on the long side. Hopefully I havent lost you yet and you’ve made it this far! I’ll do one more. One of my former jobs, The Call Center agent. I was actually employed at a call center for one of ‘The Big Three’ when this news broke. My co-workers had mixed reactions to the development. Forbes Reports

“IBM’s question-answering Watson supercomputer is building quite the résumé. First it won a much-publicized showdown against the two greatest Jeopardy! champions of all time, then it went to medical school and emerged as a budding oncologist. Now Watson has a new job–as a customer-service agent with the mostest. The help desk is a bit of a step down from fighting cancer, but IBM is nothing if not pragmatic. U.S. organizations spend $112 billion on call center labor and software, yet half of the 270 billion customer-service calls go unresolved each year, presenting a fairly sizable opening for an enhanced cognitive computer. Let’s face it: Rare is the occasion when you a) reach a live person and b) they know what they’re talking about. Why not give silicon a chance?

Starting in the next few months, IBM will be rolling out with several key customers an “Ask Watson” feature that will greet and offer help through various channels: Web chats, email, smartphone apps and SMS. Some customers will eventually equip the service with voice recognition from a partner such as Siri or Nuance. The guinea pigs include Australia’s ANZ Bank, Nielsen, Celcom, IHS, and Royal Bank of Canada.”

Here is a video from IBM discussing the concept

I’ve read the University of Oxford study in full and was surprised by one of the findings. While I often research how jobs will be made obsolete by advances in society, technology and automation. I tend to not focus too much on jobs that are lost — but not quite made obsolete. These are jobs lost to offshoring. So on top of the 50% of jobs you’re going to lose to robots, You’re going to lose a further 30% to Manila, Beijing and Dubai. Combine that with the 15% current unemployment … and your looking at 95% total unemployment, Best case scenario (or worst, depending on your worldview)

Here is a list of all the jobs that will be made obsolete in the near future. Ordered from those that will ‘most certainly without a shadow of a doubt’ be automated to those that are ‘very highly likely’ to be automated. Perhaps humanity is about to evolve past the need for your chosen career choice?

Nigel Todman is an Independent Journalist, Technical Consultant, Social Activist, Web Developer and Computer Programmer from Ontario, Canada. Add him to Facebook and/or Follow him on Twitter E-mail: veritas [at] vts-tech [dot] org This article can be republished under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, With a link back to this article and attribution to Nigel Todman