50% of occupations today will no longer exist in 2025: Report

[Jesus Malverde]

A paradigm shift is expected to be witnessed in the way workplaces operate over the next 15 years, making nearly 50 per cent of occupations existing today redundant by 2025, a report has said.

Artificial intelligence will transform businesses and the work that people do. Process work, customer work and vast swathes of middle management will simply disappear, it said.

The report titled 'Fast Forward 2030: The Future of Work and the Workplace' has been prepared by realty consulting firm CBRE and China-based Genesis, a property developer, after interviewing 220 experts, business leaders and young people from Asia, Europe and North America.

"Nearly 50 per cent of occupations today will no longer exist in 2025. New jobs will require creative intelligence, social and emotional intelligence and ability to leverage artificial intelligence. Those jobs will be immensely more fulfilling than today's jobs," the report said.

http://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/50-of-occupations-today-will-no-longer-exist-in-2025-report-114110701279_1.html

CBRE is run by Sen. Feinstien's hubby

[alarimer]

1. And those people who are not "creative" are screwed, I guess.

And what does "ability to leverage artificial intelligence" even mean?

There goes the rest of the middle class.

[closeupready]

2. Probably means glorified data entry operators.

[Ampersand Unicode]

35. "Creative" my foot.

The hell does that even mean? Aspiring actors and novelists will become the new upper-middle class? We're all just going to become bazillionaires slapping up fan fiction novels on Amazon Kindle and uploading cat videos to Youtube? Oh, wait a minute -- I know what they mean by the "creative intelligence" sector:



Yup, I can totally see this struggling indie musician having modest sales as a result of the "creative intelligence economy." /sarc

The term "starving artist" wasn't invented yesterday. As someone who myself is a liberal-studies major (sucks at math) and considering hara-kiri to avoid burdening the American people with paying for my sorry ass to sit under a tree and read books all day, I call BS (BA? MFA?) on this projection.

[yeoman6987]

3. First to go cashiers at fast food places

Already beginning in some places. You walk up to the kiosk, place your order, swip your card and 5 minutes later your food appears. A local fast food place will end up with 4-5 workers by the time it is said and done. Cashiers at grocery stores are worse as we already see. Many self checkouts with 2-3 actual cashiers where it used to be 10 at any given time. Those who are looking for a career should stay away from cashier and chose plumber or electrician.

[nichomachus]

4. Our chain market just tossed out the self-checkouts

Don't know why, but they did.

[yeoman6987]

5. Well that is certainly interesting!

[nichomachus]

8. Two possibilities

I live in an area with a lot of old people (I am one too), and many of them were mystified by the self-checkout. An awful lot of the time, a store employee would have to help the person, practically checking out for them -- even to the point of having to slide their credit card for them. So, the store may not have been saving as much money as they thought they would.

The other is that CA passed a law that said that liquor couldn't be purchased at a self-checkout. You have to go stand in line with a real person. I know I stopped buying beer and liquor there because I didn't want to stand in line at one of the two registers were open. So the store may have been seeing their liquor sales drop.

[NBachers]

53. I know someone who manages 9 self-checkouts in their job

They say that an enormous amount of stuff goes out the door unpaid-for.

This person has no back-up from management or security, and gets threatened if they confront the offender.

I hate self-checkout.

[AZ Progressive]

54. A lot of personal experience makes me conclude that often, trying to save money is not worth it

You often pay more in the long run if you sacrifice quality, including lower productivity, higher costs, and thus worse results. You can save money but you have to be very careful.

All corporate executives care about nowadays is the quarterly results, and when the company goes bad they jump out with their golden parachutes. Absolutely no real consequences to them.

[JI7]

9. they are only ok if you have about 1 to 3 items

And even then there are problems requiring actual human bEings to deal with. And what could easily have been done by cashier in a short time ends up taking much longer.

[RedCappedBandit]

15. Yep

Can't stand in when the damn things just tell you to wait for an associate who is nowhere to be found. Much rather go to a cashier and I do whenever the choice exists.

[Warpy]

13. Maybe they noticed people were scanning the canned veg

but bagging the meat without scanning it. Or they just gathered dust.

[nichomachus]

25. No, they were watching that

I once scanned grey squash as green squash -- exact same shape, exact same price. They were down on me in an instant. We had to void the grey squash and scan the green squash. Also, you couldn't put anything in your bag that you hadn't scanned. It had a weighing mechanism in the bagging place. "Unexpected item in the bagging area."

[Kalidurga]

26. "Unexpected item in the bagging area."

Two days ago my unexpected item was an item that I had scanned. I put it in the bag and that message came up. I set that aside scanned the rest of my items bagged them and everything went like normal. Paid for my stuff put the item back in the bag. Took my receipt and was on my way. I should have said something maybe...but I was quite distressed by the whole thing.

[Warpy]

32. Ah. They only had them in Home Depot here

I've never seen them in any of the supermarkets.

I guess there's an advantage to living in the back and beyond in flyover country.

[dixiegrrrrl]

24. People did not like them, I suspect.

I certainly heard a lot of complaints about them at our local grocery store.
The store assigned ONE clerk just to oversee them and straighten out the screw ups.
And the puter voices were irritating as hell.

[MadrasT]

37. I discovered at my grocery store (Giant)

you can adjust the volume of the puter voices - and one of the volume levels is OFF.

The first thing I do when I use one of those self checkouts is turn that damn voice OFF.

[dixiegrrrrl]

41. damn..I will have to go check that out the next time I hit that store.

Thanks.

I have a lovely habit of turning the tvs off in the hospital waiting rooms or at least turning the channel from Faux.

[Initech]

44. Ours did because there was too much theft associated with the self check out lanes.

[JaneyVee]

10. Nah, those won't even be close to be first to go.

People hate those things. They will cause long lines and confusion. Profits will drop quickly. Besides, most workers alternate between cashier, cook, drive thru, and numerous other tasks like cleaning spills, stocking items, bathroom duty, etc.

[Ampersand Unicode]

43. Swipe your card? That's so 20th century.

All the cool robo-kids are using Apple Pay and Twitter Square.

Those who are looking for a career should stay away from cashier and chose plumber or electrician.

They should also stay away from "thinky" college degrees that don't "fit" on a keyword-based resume. Nobody in HR wants to read your senior thesis on Jane Austen. Most of them would probably scratch their heads and wonder why you spent 4 years and X thousands of simoleans writing about Steve Austin's "sister."

[snooper2]

60. being a cashier shouldn't be considered a career in the first place

[nichomachus]

6. It's already starting and it's further along than most people know

As part of my job, I read a lot of panel discussions and interviews involving corporate bigwigs from hi-tech. Two themes are evolving.

1. They think of the current concept of a "job" will go away, and it's already starting. People won't be hired and kept of for years. Instead, people will be hired for a "project" and then let go when the project is over -- or their input is no longer needed. Then, the worker will need to find a new "project," most likely with a different company and maybe in a different locations. Their current concern is how to effectively deactivate not only logins and passwords on the company systems, but the accounts themselves, once the workers move along.

IOW workers will become temp workers -- a lot like the groups of guys who stand on a corner near Home Depot hoping that someone comes along and offers them a job for a day or two.

2. Automation -- in the IT development and deployment field -- is already underway. The goal of the bosses is to drastically cut the number of people they have to hire.

And for the record, in all of these interviews and discussions, I have never heard one of these people brag about "creating jobs." In fact, it's just the opposite. They pat themselves and each other on the back for how many jobs they have eliminated. They call it "driving out cost."

[BlindTiresias]

11. So a fragile dystopia, then?

[redruddyred]

45. capitalists doing what capitalists do best.

no surprises here.

[JI7]

7. hasn't this type of thing been predicted for years ?

[Drunken Irishman]

27. Yes. It's predicted very decade.

I doubt, within ten years, we'll lose 50% of our occupations. That's extreme.

[Chathamization]

42. Yep, the age of robots is perpetually 10-30 years off. "No, but this time it's real!"

For all the talk of robots taking over, productivity growth is actually lower now than it was some years ago. Now, things can change fast sometimes - but there are also plenty of things that seem like great ideas which don't end up working out so well or having the impact they were supposed to (rocket packs, google glasses, segways). I don't know why people get so excited that now they're scanning their own grocery items instead of having the cashier scan it for them (the future! just like the massive leap forward that was made when people started pumping their own gas!).

[BlindTiresias]

12. Immensely more fulfilling? Lol

What? How?

Also there won't be enough work to sustain the economy, so there is that too.

[redruddyred]

47. already there is not enough work to sustain the economy

republican voters are stuck in a 30 year old paradigm.

[BlindTiresias]

14. This is also troubling

process work, middle management, and customer work will disappear. That leaves almost nothing but direct ownership and a small cadre of technicians. You can't sustain a modern economy on that.

[RedCappedBandit]

16. It's so backwards

Technology exists to reduce the workload people must take on to survive. Ironically, given the nature of our self-centered individualistic capitalist economy, this simple fact is going to make it harder for people to survive, even though we're producing more than ever with less labor.

[joshcryer]

17. A living wage is going to be absolutely necessary.

[AZ Progressive]

18. Good luck selling that to the "you don't eat if you don't work" Americans

[joshcryer]

19. Sell it as a negative income tax.

[airplaneman]

34. Actually a guaranteed income is going to be absolutely necessary. n/t.

[AZ Progressive]

20. Access to the Report:

http://www.cbre.com/o/international/AssetLibrary/Genesis%20Report_Exec%20Summary_1029.pdf

[BlindTiresias]

22. Oh, lol

It is virtually content-free, essentially flotsam and buzzwords.

[AZ Progressive]

21. America is rapidly becoming into an extreme "Winners and Losers" society

People who are talented, rich, aggressive, able to have been trained for the jobs of the future, lucky enough not to have performance altering disabilities, good looking, charming, or are simply just lucky will be the winners, and be able to live well. Even the people able to retire and get social security and medicare could be considered winners since they have some guaranteed income and healthcare. The losers will be all the lower skilled and employed in replaceable jobs, will be more and more harshly punished and unless a guaranteed minimum income is placed, will lead to extreme third world type conditions. The huge gap will create a lot of resentment and perhaps a divided society, but surely this is probably why the Oligarchs have removed Democracy, because they are trying to prevent the people from fighting back.

[redruddyred]

46. aggression esp seems to be well-rewarded.

and we wonder why we have a bullying problem in our schools.

social security is being stripped away as well; sick people on disability can no longer pay the bills. at least there's still medicare.

[Octafish]

23. Lazy Poor

Shiftless

[haele]

28. Sigh... Keynes said the same thing. A long time ago.

The problem with the paradigm shift in work is that while businesses and corporations and those people who have positioned themselves to be "in charge" will take advantage of the transformation in technology and business, every other area of life will continue on with status quo until the burden gets to be too much on everyone who isn't making money and living a comfortable, fullfilling life.
Government or "the public sector" isn't doing a damn thing because of idiot-ological gridlock on who's wallet deserves to be bigger and the amount of elected officials who are making policy or handling the government purse strings who don't either believe in governance or have no clue about macro economics.
Social sectors are too busy trying to stuff patching into the huge leaks in the social safety net, and don't have the time or focus to actually sit down and think about what is going to happen when the surplus of workers goes from 10 workers to 1 job to 100 workers to 1 job, or what to do with "the average person" including those who have disabilities or are functional but not "creative" or particularly intelligent.
The new Average is going to have to be "rocket scientist". It's not going to be Joe "The Office Guru" or Jane "the Multi-tasking Customer Rep".

This will only end up well if society can get a grip on values in general. So long as everything is measured or monitized, that 50% loss in occupations is going to coincide with a 50% drop in meaningful "living wage" employement. For everyone who doesn't have the money to invest in kewl new technology or start up a business on their own, or who doesn't have the extreme talent or networking/people skills to get a job at whatever jobs are available.

We need to invest in education. We need to realize that with great wealth comes great responsibility. We need to stop trying to please the Ideological Masters or Gods, or whatever - and start concentrating on and deal with reality. We need to stop being addicted to fear and outrage, and start being courageous and curious. We need to start looking at ways of reducing social stress, which is going to mean we're going to have to accept the other as a brother or sister, no matter how misguided we may think they are.

But that will take a paradgim shift in society - and I'm not seeing that happening, so long as money and power is considered more important than joy, health, justice - and mercy.
As a society, we loves us some psychopathic Strong Men and Big Men. We'd sell our mothers and daughters to a third-world brothel just to be able to lick their boots and pretend we're as Big and Strong as they are.

Haele

[Bosonic]

29. Humans Need Not Apply

I've posted this a few times before, but these type of threads usually sink fast...

[Jesus Malverde]

31. Great vid...nt

[appalachiablue]

33. I saw the video posted months ago, might have been one of yours. Although the tone is

condescending, I take it seriously. Added to this in the last year I've read online articles on the topic by MIT Tech. Review, Oxford Martin School and authors McAfee and Brynj. on 'The Second Machine Age', their new book. The huge human labor loss over the next 20 years may have been predicted for decades but it's definitely underway b/c of recent advances in AI, robotic software, 3D printing and driverless vehicles, far beyond just computer cashier replacement. I don't understand why more people here don't think this is too serious. Perhaps they're very secure.

[Ampersand Unicode]

38. I always go back to good old Durkheim

...who stated way back in the Industrial Revolution (in his seminal work, Suicide) that people would become desperate and do themselves in as a result of automated labor eliminating their jobs and therefore their ability to provide for themselves and their families. Not only that, but their psychological identities are tied to "what they do for a 'living'." So much so, in fact, that people's family names often indicated what they did as a trade or craft for generations (known as occupational surnames):

Baker, Smith, Miller, Hunter, Schreiber (Ger. scriber, or writer; roughly equivalent to English Clark, for "clerk&quot , Carpenter, Barber, Gard(e/i)ner, Cooper (a barrel-maker), Tanner (leather-maker), Butcher, Butler, Brew(st)er, Schumacher (Shoemaker)...

Wikipedia has a heck of a list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Occupational_surnames

Mass suicides may simply ensue if we don't have mass starvation first. Durkheim was right -- but so was good old Bucky Fuller:



http://buckyworld.me/

[appalachiablue]

64. I wasn't familiar with Durkheim, thanks. Credible if grim, esp. how tradtional groups like

Catholics and Jews have stronger support systems through focus on family and worship. I see this among Asians and Hispanics in the US. In general, Protestants work ethic and bourgeois values fostering distance from extended, even nuclear family are very self destructive in hard times like now. Duh. Obviously lack of resources including family support can lead to misery and decline. But not always as some manage to overcome great disadvantages, esp. if there is opportunity, somewhere. That door seems to be closing for many. Factors like mental illness and addiction are pretty tough but not insurmountable in some rare cases.
On the other hand I knew of a person who had things going for them but was slain by a divorce they had to know was coming. Just could not pull out of downward spiral, alcohol, idleness and dissipation despite some sibling support; died alone of an early heart attack.
We have family names based on trade like Fletcher, Brewer; one traced to an attribute, 'bald'; less from region which indicates higher birth or serf attachment to land maybe. I was lucky enough to see Bucky Fuller at a local college when pretty young.

[NutmegYankee]

30. *snark* *LOL* Same bullshit, different decade...

[LiberalElite]

36. No worries! We can all become "consultants" !

[Ampersand Unicode]

39. Or bloggers, or social media "experts"

...or (I love this one) "thought leaders."

The fuck is a "thought leader"? Especially in an era when most people say thinking is too haaaaaard?

[Boudica the Lyoness]

40. Our family business will still be keeping us occupied

for generations to come. We even export to China and Japan.

[Warren DeMontague]

48. HULK NO LIKE! SMASH! SMASH BAD MACHINE!

[Jesus Malverde]

49. That the rub isn't it.

No one wants to be seen as a luddite.

[Warren DeMontague]

51. There is what I like and what I want, and what I don't like and don't want

and then there is stone-cold, sometimes harsh reality.

Stone cold, sometimes harsh reality is, no amount of complaining -much less organization or legislation- was going to save the people who made a living selling buggy whips.

[BlindTiresias]

56. fear is warranted

Fear is warranted when our society violently opposes the measures necessary to make an automated society not a nightmare or a surefire road to collapse. Think about things like basic minimum income or the, to be frank, techno-communist consequences of a automated economy that serves the people and then consider how much many Americans hate that and would work to prevent it from ever happening in favor of massive structural unemployment and a tiny portion of the population seeing any benefit from automation.

The problem isn't the machines it is that the machines are not going to be used for good ends.

[Warren DeMontague]

57. A conversation is certainly warranted.

What I think you are saying about consequences and technological wealth ideally benefitting everyone, to some degree at least, several authors I respect and like were talking the same thing in the late 70s early 80s. Much of what they prophesised about automation has come true, and as such their arguments still carry weight with me as well.

And it is undeniable to me that our political structures have NOT kept up.

Personally, I don't think it's going to end up in some techno-feudal nightmare. But I do suspect that whatever political or cultural steps are taken, both change and adaptation to it will happen more or less organically, although like the industrial revolution, there will be problems AND mass dislocations until things shake out.

[BlindTiresias]

58. In fairness

I think the techno-feudal outcome is the most likely at this point in time. In contrast to the industrial revolution and its aftermath we have no ideologies of opposition, and in fact Western civilization killed the ideologies of resistance to aristocratic control. To further worsen matters, the industrial workforce could withold their labor and work together in order to gain leverage in their dealings with the capital class, the future workforce has no such advantage and given the extremely regressive opinions of the current technological cadre they won't be doing so either.

[AZ Progressive]

52. So they will rather be reamed?

Talk about an ultimately passive populace.

[LostInAnomie]

50. This scares the hell out of me.

I work for a railroad and the upper management already thinks trains should be able to run themselves.

[appalachiablue]

59. Your concern may be warranted from what I've seen lately. Transportation is a sector under

review, like retail cashiers, customer service (going extinct), mid level mgmt. jobs in many fields replaced by robotic software. Truck driver higher wage jobs (see 15 min. anti-human *video posted above), and move to self driving vehicles like buses, trains, taxis, shuttles. Hong Kong's subway system is automated I heard.
In Oct. 2013 the Oxford Martin School, a British academic center focused on global issues produced a Report that 47% of US jobs were vulnerable to automation during the next 20 years. This was picked up by the MIT Technology Review. Likewise tech experts McAffee and Eric Brynjolffsen echo this in their new book, 'The Second Machine Age'. While this massive (dystopia!) labor demise has been forecast for decades, many think it possible now in both low and middle income jobs in many occupational sectors b/c of recent advances in AI, robotic software, 3D printing, driverless autos.
You may know all this. I find it plausible and concerning. The 'Humans Need Not Apply' Video mentioned up thread is blunt but useful. (For a real eye opener see the website singularity.com, and futurist Ray Kurzweil). A relative worked at CSX for years as an environmental analyst. Positions eliminated in mid-80s.

[Douglas Carpenter]

55. way back more than 40 years ago I worked as a small town radio announcer at two different places

I was surprised recently when talking to a manger-owner of a couple of small town stations to learn that most smaller operations are completely automated - using syndicated feed for at least 90% of their programming - thus a good deal of the time there is not even a single person present at the radio station in many cases. No doubt such automation can be done with the majority of jobs.

[GreatGazoo]

61. "50%" certainly sounds like a number they made up

I see the article spins this as all positive -- mundane jobs gone and "creative" jobs replacing them. Sounds very much like what they said at the beginning of the personal computer era -- we were all going to be "desktop publishers, musicians and video makers."

In that era, one of the annointed visionairies, I forget which one, was asked "what about people who AREN'T creative, what will they do in the future?"

His answer: "they will be consumers."

[Throd]

62. In ten years? This is bullshit folks. Stop flapping your arms.

[HughBeaumont]

63. Interesting. So what will these jobs BE?

Read the PDF. It's just 20 pages of GAS. Absolutely no specifics or long game at all. Our kids cannot major in "intelligence", "innovation" or "sharing".

You cannot start the kinds of businesses they're vaguely alluding to without gobs of cash.