Future Jobs: Will Robots Do It All ?!

Technological progress is accelerating in an unprecedented way. We all know this fact, but often we only use it in decisions such as when to buy a new phone with greater capabilities and a cheaper price. The goal of this article is to get you to think a little further.

In a report by the Australian Youth Foundation - a non-profit organization that works to develop educational outcomes and life opportunities for young Australians - it was found that 70% of young people newly joining the workforce work in jobs that will be drastically affected by automation and technical progress, while 60% of current students They are being qualified for jobs that will experience similar impacts, many of which will disappear within 10 to 15 years, because two-thirds of them will be automated within the next few decades.

The report also adds that the way we work will change - more automation, globalization, open jobs and new partnerships will lower barriers to entry into the labor market and make life more flexible, but at the same time it may lead to increased unemployment, inequality and reduced job security.

And it's not just Australia. A report released by Professor Karl Benedict and Michael Osborne at the University of Oxford last year tells us that a third of Britain's jobs could disappear in the next 20 years thanks to advances in computing and robotics. Much of the administrative and secretarial work has already disappeared, and many jobs in the credit sectors and some manual labor are on their way to a similar fate.

What does this mean?

This means that the traditional model of employment and traditional jobs are on the way to disappearing, and that students should take the shape of the future work environment into consideration when choosing majors. In other words, the moment you enter college, all your current choices should be based on the shape of the world after at least 5 years. 

I add to this that it is logical that the fields that are least negatively affected by this progress are those that cause it, and by that I mean the fields for which the study philosophy called STEM qualifies (science, technology, engineering, mathematics), so it is good to join these fields, or find A way to integrate what these fields offer in your field (which is why the report advises students to focus on digital skills and entrepreneurship.)

For those who already work in fields of obsolescence or in fields outside of STEM, there are two solutions, the first solution is to use the time from now to acquire sufficient skills to transfer to a new job in the coming years that require skills that have not yet been automated (the actual duration varies according to the extent to which your field is affected by the technical progress. And automation), even if that means completely changing your field. The second solution is to constantly learn to use new tools in your traditional field.

An example of this is surgery. Conventional surgery is on its way out thanks to robots, but at this point we don't have robots that can do the entire surgery on their own. Learning a skill like how to use these robots in surgery will make it difficult to replace you (at least until we can manufacture robots that can do everything on their own).