A new report by Bank of America and Merrill Lynch suggests that a whopping 45% of the employment market in the US could be wiped out by autonomous robots in the next twenty years.
The report believes that robots will worsen labour market inequality, citing that the number of industrial robots has increased by 72% in the last ten years whilst manufacturing jobs have decreased by 16% in that same time period.
It's not just manufacturing jobs, either. Already, advanced artificial intelligence systems are being designed to handle wealth management and stock markets which theoretically could outsmart human investors by drawing on huge amounts of data and algorithms in the same space it would take a human counterpart to decide.
The report states that "in coming years, autonomous autos, human genomics, social robots, Lethal Autonomous Robots are all likely to impact human lives as well as the demand, price and efficiency of existing products."
"Basically, the speed at which technology is changing in what has been dubbed the “Second Machine Age” has the potential to quickly change the economy, the business sector and society."
It's not all bad news, however. Those who work in the arts or entertainment (YUSSSSS), personal care services or jobs which require "deeper analytical thinking" are comparatively safe as humans will still be required for those fields of employment.
In other words, we're safe but the rest of you are screwed. So, y'know, good luck with that.
