Future Now
The IFTF Blog
I for one welcome our new computer overlords
The National Academies' Center for Education has been working on a study of the future of computers and work. By 2030, they ask, what kinds of capabilities will computers have; how well will those capabilities prepare them to do jobs currently done by humans; and what proportion of the workforce might be displaced or rendered unemployable?
The results are rather scary. After looking at trends in machine vision, speech, reasoning, and movement, and estimating how important these are for doing various kinds of work, the author estimates that displacement rates could be over 80% in some fields-- sales, administrative support, food preparation, and personal care. These are also the sectors that employ the largest number of people. The safest fields for humans? Law (6%), medicine (10%), science (10%), and engineering (11%)-- fields which currently employ the smallest number of people.
[Source: Stuart W. Elliott, "Projecting the Impact of Computers on Work in 2030," p. 37, available online [PDF].]
A draft of the article is available online, and it has a lengthy description of its methods.
At first glance, it looked to me like there was an obvious flaw in the study. The high rates of replacement in "education, training, and library" suggested a systematic under-valuing of tacit knowledge or the social dimensions of work. If you assume that education is learning facts, and librarianship is finding books-- and nothing else-- then these high displacement rates would make sense, but otherwise they wouldn't. However, the relatively low replacement rates for repairmen and protective services suggests that that's not so. Any method that undervalues teachers isn't likely to also overvalue Larry the Cable Guy.
So the best places for humans in the future will be litigious, technocratic societies that spend a lot on health care. Actually, that sounds a lot like California.