Whether robots and AI will destroy or create jobs is extremely hard to
predict. It depends on various economic factors and the pace of AI
development. But some researchers have started assigning some numbers to the question.
Looking backward: In one of the first attempts to quantify the impact of industrial robots, Daron Acemoglu at MIT and his colleagues looked at data from 1990 to 2007 and found that for every robot on the factory floor, some six jobs were lost. That meant as many as 670,000 jobs for the years that they looked at—and as many as 1.5 million jobs at 2016 levels of robot usage in the US.
Looking forward: The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that about 50 percent of tasks done in our economy could be automated. But “50 percent” merely describes the “technical feasibility” of what can be automated with existing and emerging technologies, says James Manyika, the institute’s chairman. The number of jobs actually lost will depend on the costs and benefits of replacing people with machines.
Looking backward: In one of the first attempts to quantify the impact of industrial robots, Daron Acemoglu at MIT and his colleagues looked at data from 1990 to 2007 and found that for every robot on the factory floor, some six jobs were lost. That meant as many as 670,000 jobs for the years that they looked at—and as many as 1.5 million jobs at 2016 levels of robot usage in the US.
Looking forward: The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that about 50 percent of tasks done in our economy could be automated. But “50 percent” merely describes the “technical feasibility” of what can be automated with existing and emerging technologies, says James Manyika, the institute’s chairman. The number of jobs actually lost will depend on the costs and benefits of replacing people with machines.
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