al legal tasks often required in a legal career.
ABC News featured another ‘law robot’ recently, when they pitted a law student against a robot and tasking them with solving a legal problem in the shortest amount of time.
That being said, some businesses have already started incorporating AI into their workplace, and it has actually increased its number of human employees (yes, the ‘human’ needs to be specified). This happened for Smart Steel Solutions, where jobs were able to be brought back ‘onshore’ (after being sent overseas to save costs). Plus, robotics has ‘more than halved the time it takes to produce a tonne of fabricated steel and the number of employees has risen from three to nine’.
(Interested in learning about whether your job is susceptible to an AI takeover? Check out the ABC’s database.)
Which members of society are most at risk of job automation?
Students who are currently studying are already expected to have a number of jobs (and even careers) throughout their lives, and are likely to be vastly impacted by AI and automation, with our current education system not keeping up with the rate of technological advancement. Jan Owen from the Foundation for Young Australians has stated that ‘Nearly 60 per cent [of students] at university and nearly 70 per cent at TAFE were studying jobs that will be automated’.
Jobs and industries that are largely male-dominated are also more susceptible to automation: ‘There are about 2 million Australian men working in jobs where more than half of the job is at risk of automation. That compares with about 750,000 women in such roles’. These include careers that are low paying, and dominated by manual labour or machine operation.
Roles that require characteristics including creativity, caregiving, or communication are less likely to be automated, and are more commonly required in female-dominated positions. As Hugh Durrant-Whyte from the Centre for Translational Data Science at the University of Sydney has noted: ‘Women are strongly represented in roles that involve social empathy, interpersonal skills, and creativity’.
In previous generations, industries including manufacturing and agriculture have succumbed to automated technologies. However, this renewed interest in AI technology means that middle class jobs are increasingly being impacted by automation, making this a topic of greater media attention.
Which industries are the safest from AI integration?
As noted above, roles and industries that place a high value on the ‘human touch’ (traits including communication, empathy, caregiving, and creativity) are less likely to be replaced by technology. This holds true for industries including nursing and more creative industries.
The growth in AI has also seen the rise of new industries, offering promising job prospects into the future. Cyber security, for example, is seeing a huge growth in job offerings, which is expected to rise into the future. According to Dr Haskell-Dowland: ‘There is now a massive demand for cyber graduates; the demand is outstripping supply… It is predicted that by about 2021 there are going to be about 3.5 million unfilled jobs worldwide’.
Some of the other jobs that have the least amount of automatable tasks include: Engineering Professionals, Real Estate Agents, Social and Welfare Professionals, and Advertising, Public Relations and Sales Managers.
Featured image courtesy of Unsplash.
By Mia Casey