
Will Robots Take My Job? - iisbum
https://willrobotstakemyjob.com/
======
kornakiewicz
Software Developers has 4%, but Computer Programmers more than 10 times
higher. Given that this titles happen to be used interchangeably, I take those
numbers with a grain of salt.

~~~
BugsJustFindMe
A brief dig through different occupations reveals that much if not all of this
is made up garbage not worthy of rational consideration.

Technical writers are 89%, maids and housekeepers are 69%, but "commercial
pilots" are 55% and "airline pilots, copilots" are only 18%? Hah. Sure.

30% for "Zoologists and Wildlife Biologists"?

20% for "Funeral Service Managers, Directors, Morticians, and Undertakers"?

34% for "Detectives and Criminal Investigators"?

28% for "Athletes and Sports Competitors"?

What?

~~~
CannisterFlux
Musical Instrument Repairers and Tuners are 91% "You are doomed". Off-the-
shelf instruments are notoriously badly set up, and that'd probably be the
kind of "good enough" level that robots could get to. For anything more
organic you'd need a human luthier or whatever. After all a human is going to
play the instrument, not a robot, given musicians themselves are at a 4%
"totally safe" level.

Barbers are at 80%. The amount of R&D that would be needed couldn't be
justified by the low waged worker the robot would replace ($24k avg
apparently). There's just so much hidden complexity with all these fine-motor
skill jobs. It reminds me of those old physics problems "assuming a perfectly
spherical head...". Nice idea, but in practice the incentives to create a
robot barber just aren't there.

~~~
dagw
_Musical Instrument Repairers and Tuners are 91%_

I guess it's a question of how to interpret the numbers. Does it mean that
there is a 91% chance that no one will work as a Musical Instrument Repairers
and Tuners or that we will only need 9% or the current Musical Instrument
Repairers and Tuners. The former sounds very unlikely, while the latter sounds
quite reasonable.

------
panic
The original paper
([http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/future-o...](http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/future-
of-employment.pdf)) derives these numbers in the following way:

1) A selection of 70 occupations is hand-labeled as "automatable" or "not
automatable" by the authors and a group of ML researchers.

2) Three statistical models are trained using nine variables (Finger
Dexterity, Manual Dexterity, Cramped Work Space/Awkward Positions,
Originality, Fine Arts, Social Perceptiveness, Negotiation, Persuasion, and
Assisting and Caring for Others) taken from O * NET
([https://www.onetonline.org](https://www.onetonline.org)) survey data for
each of 702 occupations. The models are graded by how well they match the hand
labels from step 1. The best model of the three is chosen.

3) The numbers generated by this model are then reported for all 702
occupations. This includes the ones that were labeled to begin with: _" We
implicitly assumed that our hand label, y, is a noise-corrupted version of the
unknown true label, z. Our motivation is that our hand-labels of
computerisability must necessarily be treated as such noisy measurements. We
thus acknowledge that it is by no means certain that a job is computerisable
given our labelling."_

This methodology doesn't make a lot of sense to me. If you allow yourself to
make up (or "hand-label") 70 numbers, why not make up all 702? Why not trust
your own labels in the final data? What is the statistical model even telling
you when it's being trained on labels you don't trust?

~~~
avaer
I find it sociologically interesting how layers of math and publishing
indirection can be used to convince people that someone's opinions and biases
(hand labels) might in fact be statistically significant facts about the
world.

To their credit, at least the original authors acknowledge this problem.

~~~
crdoconnor
It's even more interesting to consider why economists might have these
inherent biases. What incentives might they be responding to?

------
splike
28% chance of 'Athletes and Sports Competitors' being replaced by robots. I
for one am looking forward to a robot wars olympics.

[https://willrobotstakemyjob.com/27-2021-athletes-and-
sports-...](https://willrobotstakemyjob.com/27-2021-athletes-and-sports-
competitors)

~~~
theandrewbailey
But 0.71% for athletic trainers. Someone's gotta keep the bots oiled.

[https://willrobotstakemyjob.com/29-9091-athletic-
trainers](https://willrobotstakemyjob.com/29-9091-athletic-trainers)

------
nverba
It strikes me as a little naive to only consider job security from the
perspective of "can a machine do my job". Once AI and automation start taking
people out of the workforce at scale, it seems likely there will be a lot more
people competing for the jobs that are left.

------
jacquesm
Interesting, the best I could find was lawyer. Politician wasn't available, I
suspect that is the safest job of all, if it should ever become threatened
they will simply pass a law that makes that illegal.

~~~
onion2k
I looked up lawyers too
([https://willrobotstakemyjob.com/23-1011-lawyers](https://willrobotstakemyjob.com/23-1011-lawyers)).
Given the fact that a lot of the legal research and discovery work that
lawyers do is already being done by software instead of junior level humans, I
think that number is _completely_ wrong. A lot of legal work outside of
negotiation is essentially data transformation and interpretation which is
exactly what machine learning is good for. Law is probably second to
accounting for massive disruption in the next few years, but it's a close
call.

~~~
jacquesm
Being a practicing lawyer is steeped in tradition and all kinds of archaic
things (wigs?). What I meant by 'lawyer' is not paralegal or research but
being admitted to the bar and allowed to practice law. I really don't see a
computer getting a pass on that anytime soon simply because the bar
association is made up of lawyers.

That research can be aided and may be done by a computer is beyond dispute at
this point, but that job is called being a 'paralegal'.

Being a paralegal is usually a step to becoming a lawyer so I can see a bit of
a continuity problem there.

~~~
barrkel
The continuity problem will crop up across lots of disciplines, though. When
we automate, we'll probably start out at the lower ends of every discipline,
crowding out juniors where they'd normally onboard. That won't be too
threatening to senior stakeholders in the discipline, either, so they may let
it happen. And then automation will creep its way up the value chain; there'll
be strong pressure for it to do so, because with automation making the onramp
harder to get onto, there will be an increasing scarcity (and thus increasing
profit motive) to climb the value chain.

------
ge96
Reality here

I'm a dishwasher partially as well as other kitchen duties like
cooking/preparing food, that is what pays my bills.

My job is to organize the plates (computer vision), then I spray the food
remnants off them before sliding it into the "automated" washer... then I
stack them/put away where they go throughout the restaurant.

Yeah I definitely agree with that being automated/should be. I do wonder how
long(when will that happen), how much of an investment to pay for it,
likelihood it will break down. Then the rest of the site being automated as
well.

~~~
Noughmad
A relevant result for dishwashers is also how did the number of human
dishwashers decrease once automated ones become available. If you are the only
one in your kitchen, where previously there would have had to be three for the
same workload, your job is already 66% automated.

~~~
ge96
Might seem racist but a good portion of the workers are spanish-speaking
primarily... I might be assuming things as well where advancement relies on
being able to use English/work with others cohesively.

Even as a fumbling developer I'm glad to at least have some clue as to what
can be... even if I may not reach it... Dunning Kruger effect haha... I wonder
for those people what will happen. If I don't escape, I too will be in the
same boat of the low-skilled, replaceable laborer, that is what I am right
now.

edit: haha, "have a clue as to what can be" like nobody else wishes life was
better/be what they see in the news. At least the ability to know what to look
for and hopefully learn/improve my situation in life.

------
shubhamjain
How are theses numbers getting calculated? Actuaries have 21% probability of
automation vs programmers who have it 48%?

~~~
klodolph
Yeah, I always type in "computer programmer" first to see if they put any real
thought into the dataset. 48%... whatever that means, interpreted as "start
worrying".

The history of computer programming is the history of people trying to
automate computer programming. All that ends up ever happening is that the
nature of computer programming changes.

Just think of all those assembly-language programmer jobs that were "automated
away" by the invention of Fortran. Or all of those C++ programmer jobs that
were "automated away" by Java, Ruby, SQL, whatever.

~~~
samlewis
But with the changing nature of computer programming, arguably programming
becomes more efficient and needs less manpower. It's easy to see that
programming a web app today takes less man hours than it would've if you were
to try to do it 30 years ago using C.

So far it seems that these efficiency gains have been offset by growing
demands in what software can do, making the industry continue to grow. I
wonder if at some point in the future, these demands will stabilise and
continued improvements in efficiency will necessitate a reduction in the
workforce.

Will automation make a computer programmer's job disappear? No, probably not.
But will it allow one person to do the job of ten? Maybe.

~~~
barrkel
You'd have had a hard time coding the web 30 years ago, given that it hadn't
been invented yet; but 20 years ago, Perl was about as productive as something
like Python or Ruby today[1]; a web server, after all, just provides stateless
RPC. What was missing was a lot of frameworks that could permit a developer
ecosystem to grow, a developer ecosystem being something that lets your more
easily reuse things other people wrote. Developer ecosystems with critical
mass are what increase productivity, rather than technological improvements.

[1] Technically, I think common web frameworks aren't particularly productive,
because they are built around a very low common denominator. I worked on a
CRUD app framework in the early 2000s that would still blow something like
Rails out of the water in terms of productivity.

------
planetjones
Hmm the BBC already built a front-end for this a while ago. See
[http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34066941](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34066941)

------
CM30
Seems to say journalists are pretty safe:

[https://willrobotstakemyjob.com/27-3022-reporters-and-
corres...](https://willrobotstakemyjob.com/27-3022-reporters-and-
correspondents)

However, I'm not sure I'd agree too much with that. Yes, some reporters and
correspondents are safe, especially the ones writing opinion pieces or doing
investigative journalism.

But a lot of lower level journalism is not particularly novel or interesting,
with a lot of people in gaming, tech, media or sports journalism basically
just writing about current events the same way as every other individual in
the same industry.

I feel an AI could probably automatically write articles based on the events
in a sports match (heck, I'm sure that's actually being done right now in some
cases), or figure out an automated way to pick out information from a trailer
or E3/Nintendo Direct event broadcast.

~~~
petercooper
_an AI could probably automatically write articles based on the events in a
sports match (heck, I 'm sure that's actually being done right now_

That's one of the areas Narrative Science
([https://www.narrativescience.com/](https://www.narrativescience.com/))
operates in:
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34204052](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34204052)

------
scotu
I was curious about how thieves will be doing after the robot uprising. The
first occupation matching "thief" was "Chief Executives"
[http://imgur.com/a/hDIeZ](http://imgur.com/a/hDIeZ)

------
rajadigopula
I am a developer, but based on a recent article I read, data scientists are
less probable losing job to automation, so tried it and ended up here -
[https://willrobotstakemyjob.com/15-1111-computer-and-
informa...](https://willrobotstakemyjob.com/15-1111-computer-and-information-
research-scientists)

I also work in insurance industry, and rumors were, underwriters are more at
risk losing jobs to automation -
[https://willrobotstakemyjob.com/13-2053-insurance-
underwrite...](https://willrobotstakemyjob.com/13-2053-insurance-underwriters)

------
jsemrau
I entered Machine Learning Engineer and it gave me a list of job titles. No
automation ? (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

------
mcjiggerlog
4.2% probability for "Software Developers", but 48% probability for "Computer
Programmers"?

------
madmax108
Models shows 98% [1].

If I were Kate Upton or Bar Rafaeli, I'd start looking for a new job pronto!

[1]
[https://willrobotstakemyjob.com/41-9012-models](https://willrobotstakemyjob.com/41-9012-models)

------
scandox
Chicken Deboners: 94%

Chicken Sexers: 41%

I'm thinking I should go on that Chicken Sexing course.

------
iisbum
A fun side project I worked on with a friend.

Based on a report published in 2013, find out how susceptible over 700 jobs
are to automation.

~~~
klodolph
Ah, the numbers looked familiar. Some of them are pretty bogus, like "computer
programmer" at 48%.

~~~
FabianBeiner
That data is floating around since a long time, I've build
[https://www.replacedbyrobot.info/](https://www.replacedbyrobot.info/) like
over one or two years ago, I think. ;)

