Will Robots Take Your Job?: A Plea for Consensus

The trend that began with ATMs and do-it-yourself checkouts is moving at lightning speed. Everything from driving to teaching to the care of the elderly and, indeed, code-writing can now be done by smart machines. Conventional wisdom says there will be new jobs to replace those we lose ? but is it so simple? And are we ready?

Technology writer and think tank director Nigel Cameron argues it’s na?ve to believe we face a smooth transition. Whether or not there are ＂new＂ jobs, we face massive disruption as the jobs millions of us are doing get outsourced to machines. A twenty-first-century ＂rust belt＂ will rapidly corrode the labor market and affect literally hundreds of different kinds of job simultaneously.

Robots won?t design our future ? we will. Yet shockingly, political leaders and policy makers do not seem to have this in their line of sight. So how should we assess and prepare for this unknown future?