By Bizna Brand Analyst
Are machines coming for your job? The answer may surprise you. Last night I saw a discussion on Citizen Tv about the same and wondered which lucrative jobs are currently at risk.jobs
Unskilled manual laborers have felt the pressure of automation for a long time — but, increasingly, they’re not alone. The last few years have been a bonanza of advances in technology. As our software gets smarter, it can tackle harder problems, which means white-collar and pink-collar workers are at risk as well.
Here are jobs expected to be automated (partially or entirely) in the coming decades.
1. Artists.
People who are talented in drawing and painting may soon find themselves jobless. There are countless of apps and software that can create perfected artistic images in an instant nowadays. Of course, there are many people who still prefer the traditional art but that is bound to change as technology advances. In five to ten years time, software developed art will be better than anything Leonardo Da Vinci or Picasso ever did.
2. Customer care employees
Many of today’s customer care agents in developed countries are not human. In some cases, there’s nothing but a recording on the other end of the line. It may prompt you to “press ‘1’ for more information,” but nothing you say has any impact on the call — and, usually, that’s clear to you.
But in other cases, you may get a call and have no idea that you’re actually speaking to a computer. Everything you say gets an appropriate response — the voice may even laugh. How is that possible? Well, in some cases, there is a human being on the other side, and they’re just pressing buttons on a keyboard to walk you through a pre-recorded but highly interactive marketing pitch.
3. Accountants
Accounting software is nothing new; many accountants have relied on it for years. But the landscape is changing, with software becoming easier to use and more consumer-friendly than ever before. For startups and small businesses, automating their accounting needs is an attractive alternative to paying an expensive accountant.
The transition from professional accountants to do-it-yourself software solutions like Freshbooksand TurboTax won’t happen overnight, and there are a number of situations where human accountants will still be preferred, but most organizations will be perfectly happy to automate it as much as possible. As a result, the demand for accountants will decrease dramatically across many industries in the coming years.
4. Medical staff
Human doctors aren’t going anywhere in the foreseeable future, but their lower-level staff may soon find themselves replaced by computers that perform their jobs more accurately and efficiently.
A new computer system named Watson is being programmed to work in medicine, helping physicians diagnose diseases, evaluate patients, and prescribe treatments.
In this case, Watson would tap into medical journals, textbooks, individual patients’ medical history, and other sources to make a truly informed diagnosis and treat the patient accordingly.
5. Cashiers
Cashiers are probably the most obvious example of pink-collar job automation, if only because the transition is already happening.
Self-scan checkout terminals will be taking over retail stores everywhere. And it makes sense: a single employee can oversee six or more self-scan lanes, whereas a typical cashier would be tied to a single register. Assuming the trend continues, it’s only a matter of time until major retailers switch to using self-scan terminals exclusively.
