A team of economists at the McKinsey Global Institute are forecasting what work in America will look like in 2030. The research finds automation widening the gap between urban and rural areas, and dramatically affecting people who didn’t go to college or finish high school. It projects some occupations poised for massive growth, but that almost 40% of U.S. jobs are in occupations that are likely to shrink — though not necessarily disappear.

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The Swedish economic historian Carl Benedikt Frey’s new book ‘The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor and Power in the Age of Automation’ was written to dispel some of the hysteria raised by Michael Osborne and his 2013 research that up to 47 percent of American jobs were at risk of being automated by the mid-2030s. He suggests a more nuanced analysis of the research, and defines anti-tech backlash as the technology trap we should be trying to avoid.

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You can force businesses to raise wages, but you can’t force them to keep workers. Many studies establish the correlation between higher minimum wages and lower available jobs – before considering the impact of technology.

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AI will be a major growth driver for Asia in the coming decade. Most companies are expecting headcount to increase. AI will affect one in every five jobs in Asia—eliminating one in eight. AI will produce winner and loser countries, depending upon their economy.

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As technology continues to progress, the possibility of an abundant future seems more likely. If robots take all the jobs, basic income provides us livable welfare for doing nothing, and healthcare is a guarantee free of charge, then what is the point of our lives? As physical struggles disappear, the world will become a vibrant culture where individuals are striving to find inner peace and fulfillment, to build meaningful relationships, and to find themselves.

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AI is set to influence every aspect of our lives, not least the way production is organized. AI, as a technology platform, can automate tasks previously performed by labor or create new tasks and activities in which humans can be productively employed. Recent technological change has been biased towards automation, with insufficient focus on creating new tasks where labor can be productively employed. The consequences of this choice have been stagnating labor demand, declining labor share in national income, rising inequality and lower productivity growth. The current tendency is to develop AI in the direction of further automation, but this might mean missing out on the promise of the right kind of AI with better economic and social outcomes.

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Two influential economists, Daron Acemoglu of MIT and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University, have written 3 papers that challenge the benefits of AI for workers. ‘Demographics and Automation’ argues that, as workers age from 21 to 55, robots are used increasingly to replace them. ‘Automation and New Tasks. How Technology Displaces and Reinstates Labor’ argues that automation hasn’t created a sufficient number of new tasks. ‘The Wrong Kind of AI? Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Labor Demand’ challenges those creating and utilizing AI, noting that “Recent technological change has been biased towards automation, with insufficient focus on creating new tasks where labor can be productively employed … The consequences of this choice have been stagnating labor demand, declining labor share in national income, rising inequality and lower productivity growth.”

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Transhumanist Zoltan Istvan understands the future is coming faster than many realize. And he’s readying his kids for it.

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Economists have very different ideas about just how much of the current workforce will be.replaced by automation. Predictions of the number of U.S. jobs are compared. Points made are that: Just because a technology exists doesn’t mean it’s going to be used; Jobs involve a mix of task; and, the data used for predictions isn’t good enough because it only measures what we know.

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For many African countries, the gig economy could just be called “the economy.” For example, just 17% of Kenyan employment is formal.

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A review of the arguments for and against the elimination of most jobs, leading to the conclusion that most current jobs will disappear but that other, but fewer, jobs requiring more intelligence will be created.

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Toyota’s automation ratio today is no higher than it was 15 years ago, based on the premise that only people can improve their own efficiency or the quality of their work. Toyota consistently generates industry best profit margins, often 8% or more, by focusing on their New Global Architecture in which material usage is improved making the cars lighter and more fuel-efficient, while the manufacturing process is improved.

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The 2017 Randstad Employer Brand Research shows that 76% of US workers do not fear that their job will be replaced by a machine. 51% would be willing to retrain or upskill, in order to work with automation or AI—if their pay isn’t cut. Only 6% of top business leaders say they see automation majorly shifting talent needs at their workplace.

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Why the electric engine (18 parts) will replace the Internal Combustion Engine (2,000+ parts), and the implications for the automobile industry (ICE manufacturers and car dealerships, auto parts, car maintenance, gas stations) and related industries (insurance, highway motels and restaurants), and for society in general, and peak oil demand.

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A new report from The Sutton Trust said that, in addition to replacing 15 million jobs, robotics will widen the gap between the rich and poor in the UK. By hollowing out the middle class, it will be more difficult for individuals from lower socioeconomic backgrounds to move up the social ladder. Other reports argue the validity of automation fully replacing jobs, but fears remain among 74% of business professionals that their job is at risk.

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The CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas argues that globalization is being blamed wrongly for job loss, where the culprit is actually technology-enabled disruption. This error will cause trade negotiations to focus on the wrong set of issues.

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Erik Brynjolfsson is an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-author of The Second Machine Age, a book that asks what jobs will be left once the software has perfected the art of driving cars, translating speech and other tasks once considered the domain of humans. He believes that, as in the past, new jobs will replace those lost.

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Frey and Osborne’s study estimated that about 47% of U.S. employment is in the high-risk category of being replaced by automation. Gallup analyzed their data, concluding that Millennials are the generation most vulnerable to the threat of AI and automation, as they are disproportionately more likely to hold positions in the high-risk category.

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From Silicon Valley to Davos, pundits have been warning that millions of individuals will be thrown out of work by the rapid advance of automation and artificial intelligence. As economic forecasts go, this idea of a robot apocalypse is certainly chilling. It’s also baffling and misguided. (Need Subscription for details)

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Today’s office workers are confident that they will not be replaced by robots, according to Adobe’s The Future of Work report. In a survey of more than 4,000 office workers from the US, the UK, and Germany, two-thirds of professionals said they think that their job requires human abilities that technologies such as AI will never be able to replace.

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Devin Fidler of the Institute for the Future predicts that as basic automation and machine learning move toward commodities, it’s the uniquely human skills that become valuable. Now developers work on goals farther down the roadmap — they reach milestones faster. They must continue learning new development skills.

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In a CNBC interview, Alibaba CEO Jack Ma shared his thoughts on AI’s risks and opportunities, including 4-hour workdays in a 4-day workweek, and the possibility of World War 3 if the government does not intervene.

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A report from the Indeed Hiring Lab indicates that 51% of millennials looking for work are interested in jobs that carry a risk of automation. The findings indicate the youngest and most educated generation in the American workforce isn’t necessarily more robot-proof than older workers, who tend to be portrayed as the primary victims of automation. The top 5 occupations millennials favored are non-routine jobs, including health-care support roles at hospitals and nursing homes, which are projected to grow 23 percent from 2014 to 2024.

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Bob Reselman researches the impact of automation on jobs. His concern is not that lots of people will be out of work, but how will people spend their time.

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The question of the proper work-life balance has puzzled thinkers from Moses and Marx to Ford and Friedman. How much work is enough? How much is excessive? Who should do it? Can we work on the Sabbath? It is this question of work-life balance that The Greens Party of Australia seeks to answer, with its recent discussion as to the feasibility of a four-day work week or a six-hour day.

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A 2017 White House report concluded that 83% of jobs paying <$20/hour will be lost; 9-47% of jobs are in danger of being lost, especially for the less educated; 2.2-3.1 million driving jobs will be eliminated by self-driving vehicles. Automation has eliminated 4 million manufacturing jobs since 2000, resulting in the U.S. labor force reducing by 10 million, with a labor participation rate now at only 62.7%. There are 95 million American of working age not in the workforce. We will have to rethink the relationship between work and being able to feed ourselves.

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The idea that many of humanity’s greatest achievements were produced by people who worked no more than four hours a day seems counterintuitive but is supported by a towering body of evidence in support of much shorter workdays that produce greater productivity with significant health benefits.

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Technology in transportation, warehousing, and retail may soon cause the loss of many of 27 million US jobs. Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, and the author provide warnings and possible solutions. Prompt action is essential.

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At the beginning of a 4th Industrial Revolution, developments in genetics, artificial intelligence, robotics, nanotechnology, 3D printing, and biotechnology, etc. are all building on and amplifying one another, laying the foundation for a revolution more comprehensive and all-encompassing than anything we have ever seen. Smart systems—homes, factories, farms, grids or cities—will help tackle problems ranging from supply chain management to climate change. The rise of the sharing economy will allow people to monetize everything from their empty production and employment pose major challenges to corporations, governments, and individuals. Concurrent to the technological revolution is a set of broader socio-economic, geopolitical and demographic drivers of change, each interacting in multiple directions and intensifying one another. As entire industries adjust, most occupations are undergoing a fundamental transformation. While some jobs are threatened by redundancy and others grow rapidly, existing jobs are also going through a change in the skill sets required to do them.

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By 2035, we will have almost unlimited energy, food, and clean water; advances in medicine will allow us to live longer and healthier lives; robots will drive our cars, manufacture our goods, and do our chores. But there won’t be much work for human beings. This is a future we need to be aware of – and prepare for.

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