Is your work essential or will you be replaced?

How can you find out if the work you carry out is essential to the company or if you might be replaced without a second thought from one day to the next, perhaps by machines? In order to answer this question we will entrust our quest to a graphic designer and a developer who have created a kind of search engine which is able to assess whether a robot is one day more likely to take over the duties of one specific professional role rather than another.

This is the (disconcerting) theme dealt with during Wired Next Fest 2017, from which it has emerged that machines will be able, at most, to provide greater support to people, but they will not have the power to replace them completely, apart from some roles involving very repetitive tasks (in which case automation will already be more possible and probable).  So what are the features of the new system which is able to identify the jobs at risk?

‘Will robots steal my job?’ is a platform invented and developed by Dimitar Raykov and Mubashare Iqbal, which, when a determined role is entered, is able to establish whether this role will be carried out by a robot in the future.  According to early findings, people in creative roles such as that of journalist, choreographer or artist don’t need to worry, while those in jobs such as parking attendants would seem to be much more easily replaceable.

The most interesting feature of the platform is the fact that for each single profession, it provides extra data such as the risk factor, the current (2016) numbers employed in a certain sector, their average wage and an approximate growth forecast for that sector up until the year 2024.  It should be stated however that the information provided relates above all to the United States market.

Even though it is not yet completely reliable and is limited to the USA, this search engine for identifying in which jobs human intervention is essential and in which it may be replaced, provides a valid tool for all those who fear losing their jobs.  Of course, finding out that you are not indispensable as far as your company is concerned is bound to be unpalatable, but at least you will be able to get organised in good time and make a career change.

For further information relating to data used by the search engine created by Dimitar Raykov and Mubashar Iqbal, you can read about the findings of research on this subject in Frey and Osborne’s report: ‘The future of employment:  How susceptible are jobs to computerisation?’ published in 2013.

Translated by Joanne Beckwith