What Skills to Upgrade to Not Get Replaced by a Robot Soon

The technical potential for automation differs significantly across sectors and activities. But the opportunities for humans aren’t totally taken over by robots. Here's how to remain relevant in a progressively more artificially intellectual world.

Being flexible is the key. And if machines are going to take over increasingly inflexible roles, then one needs to make them work for you. In the book, Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines, Thomas H. Davenport and Julia Kirby outline five ways to survive the automation era. Kirby argues that workers must be willing to "burn the midnight oil to improve their own skills, and either make friends with smart machines or find a way to do things they cannot do. Complacency is not an option. But despondency isn't either."

In a further interview with Fast Company, Kirby goes on to admit that machines do the work that machines are best at, like computational tasks involving huge amounts of data. However, emotional intelligence is where humans will continue to always have an upper hand. And if you can't beat them, join them. Kirby says new roles in a robot dominated workforce will involve "identifying situations for which the machine isn't well suited, and helping it to deliver even greater productivity advances over time".

Technical feasibility is a necessary requirement for automation in computerization, but not a complete analyst that an activity will be automated. In discussing automation, we refer to the possibility that a given activity could be automated by adopting currently demonstrated technologies, that is to say, whether or not the automation of that activity is technically possible. Each entire occupation is made up of numerous types of activities, each with varying degrees of technical achievability. 

A second factor to consider is the cost of developing and setting up both the hardware and the software for automation.

The cost of labor and related supply-and-demand dynamics represent a third factor: if workers are in abundant supply and significantly less expensive than automation, this could be an important argument against it.

A fourth factor to consider is the benefits beyond labor substitution, including higher levels of output, better quality, and fewer errors. These are often larger than those of reducing labor costs.

Regulatory and social-acceptance issues, such as the extent to which machines are acceptable in any particular setting, must also be weighed. A robot may, in theory, be able to replace some of the functions of a nurse, for example. But for now, the prospect that this might actually happen in a highly noticeable way could prove bad for many patients, who expect human contact. The possibility for automation to take hold in a sector or occupation reflects a slight connection between these factors and the trade-offs among them.

The hardest activities to automate with currently available technologies are those that involve managing and developing people (9 percent automation potential) or that apply skilled labor to do decision making, planning, or creative work (18 percent). These activities, often characterized as knowledge work, can be as varied as coding software, creating menus, or writing promotional materials.

For now, computers would do an excellent job with very well-defined activities, such as optimizing trucking routes, but humans still need to determine the proper goals, interpret results, or provide commonsense checks for solutions. The significance of human interaction and communication is yet evident in two sectors that, so far, have a comparatively low technical potential for automation: healthcare and education.

Appreciating the activities that are most prone to automation from a technical point of view could provide a unique opportunity to rethink how workers engage with their jobs and how digital labor platforms can better connect individuals, teams, and projects. It could also inspire and motivate top managers encouraging them to think about how many of their own activities could be better and more efficiently executed by machines, freeing up their precious executive time to focus on the core foundation and competencies that no robot or algorithm can replace—as yet.

Share this post:

MyPrivateTutor UAE

MyPrivateTutor is an online marketplace for all kinds of tutoring and learning services. We provide a platform to help learners find home tutors, online tutors, expert trainers,tutorial centers, training institutes and online tutoring schools. Learners can also find local classes, workshops, online courses and tutorials on a huge variety of topics. We operate in 12 countries worldwide and our community of learners, teachers and training businesses numbers over 200,000. We provide an opportunity for individual tutors and tutoring businesses to promote and grow their business.