Top 10 Jobs That Might Not Survive the Coming Robot 'Jobocalpyse,' Is Yours on the List?

[MADem]

52. Well, I think you're limiting your concept of "replacement"

The idea isn't that humans in these jobs disappear, the idea is that they become not just "worker bees" but "robot bosses." They use the robots to assist them, thus requiring fewer humans in the job.

I don't think the human supervisory factor will go away, but -- as I said--a human supervising a "nurse robot" can do the work of two or three people. Instead of needing two humans to move a person from a bed to a gurney, you would now only need one. If everyone is carded before they enter the bar, then robot bartenders can make the drinks and a single human can hand them out--no stopping to open bottles/mix drinks with every order; it's like the guy on the counter at McDonalds. Driver-overseers on either end of a convoy, as I said, can eliminate three, four, even five drivers without having to fix any road infrastructure. And at Natick Labs, they have been working for decades on a robotic exoskeleton for military personnel that will turn a human into a blooming forklift, able to lift great weights and haul ass up and down rough terrain--they are getting very close on that one. In the field, now, for years, robots have gone into buildings and checked for people/booby traps/bombs--that's not the future, that's now--and that's a job some poor human used to have to do. iRobot makes those, they look like the toy remote control cars that were popular Xmas gifts, only slightly more robust.

So, it's not really "clickbait" if it can happen soon, and everything I've mentioned in the above paragraph can happen very soon indeed. In fact, robots have for a long time replaced mailmen--just not delivering the mail; a machine does read even the hand written zip codes, though, and sorts the mail. That is a job that humans used to do.

As for revenue from speeding tickets eventually going away, a pot tax would help on that score; alternatively, there is a movement afoot in several states (MA is one) to tax people based on their road usage--people are hating the idea, but it keeps cropping up--usage would be monitored by a transponder embedded in the inspection sticker. Like I said, people hate the idea but it isn't quite dead yet. VA was taxing electric vehicles to make up for the gas they weren't buying, not sure if that tax is still on but that crook governor put that on the books.

I think the article's purpose is to throw these ideas out there--the future is coming, we can't stop it, and it is likely that a lotta jobs are going to change as a consequence of automation. I don't think it's a bad thing--any time people need to use their brains and not just their brawn, I think that makes a job more interesting. Bossing around robots requires people to use their brains, if only just a bit in some cases.