A study published on January 13th by the McKinsey Global Institute argues that although a large proportion of standardised, repetitive jobs are bound to be replaced, Automation technologies, including robotics, artificial intelligence and machine learning, will unleash human strengths (such as communication and creative activities) to create more different jobs and employment opportunities in the future. And enable the world to better face the challenges of aging and maintain economic growth.

 

Automation is expected to boost global productivity by 0.8% to 1.4% a year over the next few decades, according to a scenario model developed by McKinsey.

 

The report analyzed more than 2,000 jobs across more than 800 occupations. It found that while less than 5% of occupations could be fully automated by improving existing technology, with a payroll cost of $12 trillion; But nearly 60% of occupations or industries involve 30% of their work content that could be automated, suggesting that more occupations are being transformed by automation than are being eliminated by it.

 

It is clear that automation technology can help humans reduce errors, improve quality and speed in their work, and in some cases even create results beyond human ability. After losing to the master, Chinese professional go player Ke Jie wrote on his Microblog, "After thousands of years of human evolution, computers tell us that human beings are all wrong." He said he was inspired and hoped to learn from the master.

 

"It's science fiction, but automation isn't going to happen overnight. It's going to take decades to fully develop, so we need to think about job redeployment, not mass unemployment," Daniel Nee, a senior director at McKinsey in Hong Kong, said at a press conference on Monday.

 

He said they had looked at global growth over the past 50 years and concluded that 1.7 per cent of the average 3.5 per cent annual global growth over that period was due to the demographic dividend, while the other 1.8 per cent was due to productivity gains. However, under the influence of the current economic slowdown and weak productivity improvement, many countries are also facing the problem of aging. I believe that automation technology can greatly help solve the problem of aging and achieve economic development goals.

 

One example is the continued investment of international venture capital funds into AI technology in health care. According to CB Insights, fewer than 10 startups in the space received vc funding in 2011, but that number grew to 60 in 2015, involving an estimated $262 million in investments. Another 40 rounds followed through the first half of 2016, including a $40 million Series E round for Pathway Genomics, a health drinking company powered by IBM's Watson supercomputer.

 

The jobs most vulnerable to automation are manual labor in a highly stable and predictable environment, and the collection and processing of data, such as many jobs in manufacturing, catering and other industries; Geographically, China, India, Japan and the United States have been hardest hit. China and India, respectively, have 394 million and 233 million people working in jobs that could be optimized by automation, with salaries of $2.3 trillion and $0.4 trillion. There are 60 million of them in the United States, and they cost $2.5 trillion in wages.

 

According to the report, the three countries with the largest use of robots are South Korea, Japan and Germany, in order, measured by the proportion of robot equipment per 100 workers, South Korea is 4.7 percent, while China is only 0.3 percent. However, Nee believes that the Chinese government currently attaches great importance to the development of high-end manufacturing and intelligence, and believes that the next decade will catch up.

 

"People will inevitably be affected by this trend in the future, so they should keep an open mind and continue to learn and adapt to the way they work with robots and other automated technologies." Ni said.

 

The report also acknowledges that this evolution poses great challenges for both companies and governments, including how to provide appropriate training courses and supporting policies.

 

The speed and degree of the development of automation technology depend on the multiple constraints of technology, economy and society. In terms of technology, although there have been great advances in recent years, Siri and other artificial intelligence voice assistants have also entered the level of mass consumption. Improvements in machines' ability to understand natural language could be the start of the next phase of runaway automation, the report says.