When the likes of Arkwright and Vaucanson were inventing the very first textile looms in the mid 1700’s, little did they realise they were the start of man’s love-hate relationship with machines in the workplace. Nor would they have realised that machines would go on to replicate a whole range of mental tasks as well as physical ones.
Today automation in the workplace is seen as the norm, certainly for manufacturing environments. What many don’t realise is how automation is impacting other spaces such as offices, surgeries and courtrooms.
Which sectors are evolving as we speak?
Law
Many firms already utilise AI to bill hours, conduct research, and perform due diligence. A Gartner report showed that 63% of in-house legal work is repeatable and doesn’t require subjective judgement or interpretation. This could be why a study by Deloitte predicts that about 114,000 legal jobs, mostly junior positions, will be automated in the next 20 years, and that most paralegal and legal research positions are predicted to be eliminated within the next decade.
With repetitive tasks like document review taken out of the typical law professional’s job description, skills like critical thinking, emotional intelligence, project management, and business development will become a more important focus.
Healthcare
Surgeons have been using robotically-assisted tools for since the 1980s, reducing surgery time and ensuring greater precision during medical procedures. Today, deep learning algorithms have been shown to be as accurate as healthcare professionals at diagnosing illness based on medical imaging.
Elsewhere in healthcare, the future of automation within pharmacology is bright. Some examples already in place include automated phone call systems, which can contact large numbers of patients and ensure patient confidentiality by not accidentally revealing too much personal medical information in voicemails.
Other helpful automations in healthcare include dispensing robots, which make fewer errors than humans and allow pharmacists more time for patient consultations. In the future, pharmacy technicians may struggle to compete with these innovations for jobs, as automation can complete many of the traditional tasks a technician does faster, and more accurately.
Finance
In the finance industry, the frontrunners in AI technology are seeing 19% companywide revenue growth directly related to AI initiatives, and Accenture’s Finance 2020 report predicts that by 2020, up to 40% of transaction accounting work will be automated or eliminated. This sounds like a daunting statistic, but could actually drastically improve employee performance, rather than eliminate thousands of positions completely. Robotics and automation will alter how finance staff do their work, but the report says this will allow them more time for decision support, predictive analytics, and performance management--up from 25% to 75%.
In 2017, Swiss bank UBS Chief Executive Sergio Ermotti told Bloomberg Markets that the financial services company could eventually operate with 30% less of its nearly 95,000 employees. Elsewhere, financial institutions expect automation to improve their current employees’ performance.
Journalism
AI technology can find leads online, fact-check sources, and analyse vast amounts of data in a fraction of the time it would take a reporter. Capabilities like News Tracer, used at Reuters, can detect major events such as terrorist attacks by monitoring social media activity worldwide.
Globally, bots and tools like Heliograf, Cyborg, Bertie and Summarizer already assist major news outlets in enhancing their human workforce. These technologies gather data, suggest stories to reporters, and even write stories of their own. Sports and data-heavy stories can be written by these tools and bots, leaving human reporters more time to devote to storytelling, critical thinking, and creativity. At the moment, these tools and bots aren’t adept at noticing satire or mistakes, which could lead to fewer human writers, but more editors and reporters.
The future workplace
While software and machines efficiently complete repetitive tasks in the workplace, real people are necessary for creative problem solving and critical thinking. The World Economic Forum (WEF) Future of Jobs Report 2018 predicts that by 2022, 75 million jobs will be lost--but 133 million will be created. We likely won’t be working as asteroid miners or CRISPR auditors in the next few years, but some industries will continue to see enormous job creation.
Data Science
Though several tools and programmes can quickly and accurately gather data, organisations need data scientists and analysts to gain insights from that data. Glassdoor ranked data scientist as the number one most promising job in the United States in 2019, and human reasoning still trumps pure information gathering when it comes to applying data to real life.
Machine Learning Engineering
It comes as no surprise that this area of AI is becoming a booming future profession. Rivaling data scientists, machine learning engineer was ranked by Indeed as the top job of 2019, with a 344% growth in number of job postings from 2015 to 2018. This will likely increase as AI and machine learning are further explored and implemented across industries.
Cybersecurity
With more and more personal and business information now being held online, data breaches and cybercrime become ever more challenging. No organisation is completely immune to cybersecurity threats, and as attacks become more sophisticated, a skilled cybersecurity team can be invaluable. These positions are in high demand, with an estimated 37% increase in job growth per year over the next three years.
Full Stack Development
Full stack development is another position which is predicted to skyrocket over the next few years--the US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that full-stack development employment opportunities will increase from 135,000 in 2019 to 853,000 by 2024.
Workplace displacement
Alongside emerging industries and the redefinition of existing roles, the manner in which people work is also evolving. We already see the shift towards non-traditional work settings, as remote work options become more and more attractive to both employers and employees. A 2018 article from CNCBC stated that globally, over two-thirds of people work away from the office at least once a week.
A study by Stanford professor Nicholas Bloom found that employees who work from home are actually more productive, take shorter breaks, and find it easier to concentrate than when they are in the office. Along similar lines, the growing popularity of freelance work will likely become even more common in the future. Statistics on freelancing and the gig economy reveal that if current trends continue, over 50% of the US workforce will be participating by 2027.
More freelance workers can mean better quality of work, as freelance jobs become more and more competitive. This kind of competition can encourage freelancers to continue developing their skills, and push them to become better workers.
What can we do to stay competitive?
To stay relevant in the future workplace, upskilling should be at the top of everybody’s list of priorities. Skills to focus on are those that cannot be automated--the things that make us uniquely human.
Critical thinking, creativity, problem solving, and communication skills will be part of what ensures our jobs are safe from redundancy. The challenge ahead is how to embrace future tech innovations, without letting the robots take over those aspects of the workplace that should remain inherently human.
