We’ve talked and dreamt of a life where the robots did all our work, much like in a science fiction movie, but little did we know that these machines will one day take our livelihood away from us.
Yes, these “only to be charged” at regular intervals man-made machines can make many of us obsolete.
According to a recent report by Bloomberg, automatons and smart computers are threatening to replace more than 700 occupations in the next two decades.
Doesn’t sound good, right?
Even though many of us may be the targets maybe after two decades or so, there are some occupations that are most at risk from being replaced by this new breed of metallic professionals.
On top of the riskiest occupations (threatened to be overtaken by robots in the coming years) is that of loan officers, which the findings suggest are at a 98 per cent probability of automation.
This is followed by followed by receptionists, legal assistants, retail salespersons and taxi drivers.
Security guards, cooks and bartenders also figure on the list.
"Loan officers are among the most susceptible professions," writes Bloomberg's Aki Ito. "Inroads are already being made by Daric Inc., an online peer-to-peer lender partially funded by former Wells Fargo & Co Chairman Richard Kovacevich."
Daric Inc uses an algorithm to identify safe borrowers. "Begun in November, it doesn’t employ a single loan officer," Ito writes. "It probably never will."
A previous research by two researchers from Oxford University also concluded the same.
They analysed 702 jobs across various industries and found that 47 per cent of these occupations were at risk of becoming completely computerised.
"The secular price decline in the real cost of computing has created vast economic incentives for employers to substitute labour for computer capital," the researchers wrote and this is expected to happen in varied industries.
The Oxford researchers argued that any task that can be restructured to remove the need for high-level perception and manipulation, and creative and social intelligence has a high likelihood of being computerised.
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