Thanks to the current technological development and the continuous pursuit of new competitive advantages, the ability to anticipate and meet society’s needs has become fundamental to success, which has led business leaders to seek to unleash the power of artificial intelligence systems.
That will drive innovation and increase productivity, but this requires bringing together diverse work teams, processing large data sets.
Although artificial intelligence technologies and systems are opening new doors to some great expectations across various sectors, many challenges arise when using automation in business sectors; and concerns related to artificial intelligence, especially the employment and labour markets.
The prevailing assumption is that this technology may be a significant risk, resulting in high unemployment levels, leading to an unstable situation in countries that adopt job automation.
The Brookfield Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Ryerson University in Toronto has published a report indicating that automated systems will replace 40% of Canadians within 10-20 years, causing unemployment among many Canadian work sectors.
According to this study conducted by the institute, more than 40% of Canadians are at risk of losing their jobs due to the automation process, especially since the advances in artificial intelligence and advanced robotics mean that automation is not limited to manual and limited tasks only. This study revealed some of the jobs that are likely to be replaced by automated systems, as follows:
- Retail salesperson.
- Administrative assistant.
- Food counter attendant.
- Cashier.
- Transport truck driver.
The report mentioned that “the high-risk jobs would also be affected by 70% or higher over the next 10-20 years.”
The report’s analysis indicates that those working in these “High-Risk” jobs earn less money and have a lower education than the rest of the workforce, which may make this transition very difficult for them.
In the report resulting from the Brookfield Institute study, they expect that low-risk jobs will increase to approximately 712,000 new jobs, with the absence of automation for these safe jobs, between 2014 and 2024.
At the provincial level, the report showed that Ontario’s province has the lowest percentage of jobs at risk from job automation, at 41.1%.
In contrast, P.E.I. It has the highest percentage, with more than 45% of jobs exposed to high automation risks over the next ten to twenty years.
The institute also said that workers in the most high-risk jobs range from 15 to 24 years, with most of them being young men.
According to the same report, the top five jobs that are least likely to be replaced – and which have a 30% chance of being replaced – are those associated with “advanced skills” and higher incomes, such as those in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). These jobs are:
- Retail and wholesale trade managers.
- Registered nurses.
- Elementary and kindergarten teacher.
- Early childhood educators and assistants.
- Secondary school teachers.
In this report, released by the Brookfield Institute study, the researchers predicted that high-risk jobs would increase to nearly 396,000 new jobs between 2014 and 2024.
The institute’s report stated that the ages of workers in the least low-risk jobs ranged between 25 and 54 years, as most of them are elderly employees.
“Canada’s younger and, to a lesser extent, older populations are more likely to be vulnerable to the effects of automation,” the study said.
This statement may be because young people are most receptive to learning new skills and working with modern technologies to keep pace with the work system’s frequently occurring progress.
The main difference between machines and man has always been the human mind and human emotion. Each person differs from the other in terms of reactions, temperament, and aptitude for learning.
As for machines, they are programmed according to algorithms that make them obedient to them, through which we can predict their movements, steps, results, and everything that will come from them.
Indeed, the trend towards automation is a trend for the better. Still, it is inevitable to face the negatives that exist in every new technology.
Developing skills and learning new technologies are necessary and not a choice for workers anymore, so maintaining a job that secures your life will not be as easy as in the past without learning the new technologies in the labour market.
Of course, This news was easy to expect, and in fact, replacing many routines and manual jobs with automated systems is acceptable. Still, an increasing number of reports indicate artificial intelligence algorithms invade intellectual tasks in medicine, rights, journalism, and more.
We will not know how easy the transformation is until we see it in the future, but it seems that tomorrow’s world will be a completely different landscape from what we see today.
