On June 15, 2016, CBS News posted:
Jobs at risk from automation
More than 40 per cent of the Canadian workforce is at high risk of being replaced by technology and computers in the next two decades, according to a new report out Wednesday.
The Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship at Toronto’s Ryerson University said in its report that automation previously has been restricted to routine, manual tasks. However, breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and advanced robotics now means that automation is moving into “cognitive, non-routine tasks and occupations, such as driving and conducting job interviews.”
- Machine intelligence lessons from science fiction: Don Pittis
- Labour force is operating at two speeds
- Robot drivers mean good riddance to humans
The report said the top five occupations — in terms of number of people employed in them — facing a high risk of automation are:
- Retail salesperson.
- Administrative assistant.
- Food counter attendant.
- Cashier.
- Transport truck driver.
The institute put a 70 per cent or higher probability that “high risk” jobs will be affected by automation over the next 10 to 20 years, and it said workers in the most susceptible jobs typically earn less and have lower education levels than the rest of the Canadian labour force.
“We don’t believe that all of these jobs will be lost,” said Sean Mullin, executive director of the Brookfield Institute, in a release. “Many will be restructured, and new jobs will be created as the nature of occupations change due to the impact of technology and computerization.”
This May 2016 photo shows an Otto driverless truck at a garage in San Francisco. A new report suggests technology and computers could put 42 per cent of Canadian jobs at risk in the next two decades. (Eric Risberg/Associated Press)
Jobs deemed to be at a low risk of being affected by automation — having a less than 30 per cent chance — are linked to high skill levels and higher earnings, such as management and jobs in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).
The top five low risk occupation, by employment, are
- Retail and wholesale trade managers.
- Registered nurses.
- Elementary and kindergarten teacher.
- Early childhood educators and assistant.
- Secondary school teachers.
The Brookfield Institute’s report said low-risk occupations are projected to produce nearly 712,000 new jobs, absent automation, between 2014 and 2024, while high-risk occupation are expected to add 396,000 over that same time frame.
On a provincial basis, Ontario has the lowest proportion — 41.1 per cent — of jobs at high risk of automation, while P.E.I. has the highest with over 45 per cent of jobs at high risk of automation over the next 10 to 20 years.
The institute also said workers in the jobs deemed at high risk in the study are disproportionately between 15 and 24 years, while workers in lower risk jobs tend to be “prime-aged workers,” between 25 and 54.
“Canada’s younger and, to a lesser extent, older populations are more likely to be vulnerable to the e ffects of automation,” the study said.
“We hope these findings can help contribute to an important debate about how Canada should prepare for the effects of automation and computerization on our labour force,” Mullin said.
The institute suggested that more study is needed into high-risk occupations to determine their ability to withstand automation and technology-based restructuring.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/automation-job-brookfield-1.3636253
This report looks at a future where there will be hordes of citizens of zero economic value. That is, unless the system can be reformed to empower EVERY citizen to acquire OWNERSHIP in the wealth-creating, income-producing capital assets resulting from technological invention and innovation.
This article is about REALITY! While numerous authors envision a dire result as the technological revolution advances and less and less human labor is required to produce and distribute the products and services needed and wanted by society, with just a tiny few reaping ALL of the financial rewards, virtually every solution to counter the tectonic shifts in the technologies of production poses the same old redistribution approach that results in socialism, instead of making EVERY citizen individually productive through their personal ownership stakes in the wealth-creating, income-producing capital assets resulting from technological invention and innovation. They never address the issue of concentrated ownership, nor use the therm OWNERSHIP. Instead, the ONLY solution is a redistribution of income and wealth from the rich owners of breakthrough technologies to the rest of us.
What is direly needed are honest leaders with the communication talent to advocate for making EVERY person a productive contributor to societal development through their personal ownership stakes in the productive capacity of our future. This can be accomplished without the requirement of past savings or a reduction in wages (if one is employed) or benefits using insured, interest-free capital credit to finance technological invention and innovation with the credit extended paid off out of the future earnings generated by the investments. In this way, we can build a future economy to support general affluence for EVERY child, woman and man, while at the same time generating, over the short-term (say a generation), virtual full employment and simultaneously creating new private property sector capital owners, who will benefit from growing purchasing power and financial security, and not dependent on a job that is being replaced by “machines” or a welfare State of elites determining who gets what.
The problem is that technological invention and innovation––change––makes the non-human means of producing––tools, machines, structures, and computerized processes––ever more productive while leaving human productiveness largely unchanged (our human abilities are limited by physical strength and brain power––and relatively constant). This means that fewer and fewer people are necessary to produce the products and services needed and wanted by society. But when a job is one’s ONLY way to be productive and earn an income and when jobs are disappearing and the worth of labor is being devalued, we have a problem. The problem is magnified by the fact that upward of 95 percent of the products and services are produced by physical productive capital––the non-human factor––which is owned by less than 10 percent of the population and highly concentrated among less than 1 percent of the population. The result is that primary distribution through the free market economy, whose distributive principle is “to each according to his production,” delivers progressively more market-sourced income to capital owners and progressively less to workers who make their contribution through labor.
