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Teaser: Automation has threatened peoples' jobs in the past but this time it's different.
How long do you think it will take before your college degree becomes worthless? When we think of automation, we think of huge machines in factories doing repetitive, stupid work. This isn't the case anymore· they can land aircraft, diagnose diseases, predict human behavior, and do pretty much anything else.
We are entering a new age of automation, that we are not prepared for.
A study from 2013 concluded that 47% of jobs could be fully automated "over the next decade or two" (The Economist)
Transition: The future of automation is now, and it will drastically impact our lives.
Body
In the past, new technology meant more production from humans, which meant people could do different things.
Every human used to have to hunt or gather to survive. But humans are smart and lazy, so they invented farming.
With the invention of farming, we've gone from almost everyone needing to make food, to almost no one needing to.
This advancement eliminated jobs, but also freed people to specialize. This concept improved society and made living conditions improve, and society grow.
The first round of automation occurred in factories
Huge amounts of repetitive factory jobs have been automated in the last few decades.
But these robots didn't need to think and were only cost effective in narrow situations, so they haven't taken over the world.
Transition: The first round of automation replaced human muscle, hard physical labor
That's the old kind of automation, the new kind can learn.
Their mechanical minds are capable of decision making, allowing them to replace human jobs more than mechanical muscle ever could.
This won't happen immediately or all at once, but it will be a problem if we don't prepare.
One huge industry that is being automated is transportation.
There are millions of truck drivers in the United States.
Trucking companies will not voluntarily pay for drivers if they can just hire a self-driving truck.
Companies already have self-driving trucks on the road, with people behind the wheel just in case.
As soon as this isn't needed, they will be gone.
Self-Driving cars don't need to be flawless, just better than people, and they already are.
They don't text and drive, don't get tired, and they follow the rules.
Transportation jobs are finished, and it might be the first place where people notice a dramatic change, but other industries aren't safe.
White collar work can be automated too.
A programmer doesn't even have to know how to do a certain job to make a machine do it.
Something as mysterious as the stock market is overrun with bots that have learned from past behavior of the market what to expect.
Journals and articles can be written by bots, doctor bots can diagnose diseases with more accuracy than real doctors.
It's easy to dismiss the automation problem as just another science fiction fantasy. But the robots are here now
This AI revolution is different from previous revolutions.
Before, innovation lead to more specialized jobs.
In the present, new industries still create jobs, but a lot less than they did in the past
Blockbuster at its peak had 84,000 employees and made 6 billion dollars.
Netflix in 2016 had 4,500 employees and made 9 billion dollars in revenue.(Owler)
Humans are becoming unemployable compared to machines.
Look at the most common jobs in the United States.
They are all capable of being automated.
This list comprises ~40 % of the workforce.
Automation is different this time, and it isn't going to stop. We need to think of a solution to this new revolution.
"A Study Finds Nearly Half of Jobs Are Vulnerable to Automation." The Economist, The Economist Newspaper, 24 Apr. 2018,
"The Most Common Jobs in America." Ranker, Ranker,
Impact of Automation on College Degree. (2019, Dec 16). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/outline-ai-example-essay
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