
Half the work people do can be automated: McKinsey - vmalu
https://www.techinasia.com/work-people-automated-mckinsey-study-shows
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sapeien
And what about those McKinsey consultants, surely their work can be automated
as well? :)

It is funny that the managerial class thinks that they are safe from
automation.

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crdoconnor
A lot of McKinsey's fees are generated from consulting about outsourcing. The
outsourcing boom can be ended with the stroke of a pen.

They (along with a lot of other people) have a strong incentive to scapegoat
automation for job losses.

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aalireza
McKinsey predicted that there'd be 900,000 cell phones by 2000. If their
automation prediction's error will be even a quarter as off as their cell
phones', then we are not going to have enough people to have their jobs
automated. I know inference here is inductively fallacious and here we're
talking about job categories not job numbers, but it just makes 49% feel like
98%.

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hawkice
Important note: that's 49% of work people are doing right now can be automated
with current technology. As a programmer, I see this as a signal that there's
massive need for product and sales people. Programmers are the way we get from
A to B but since <5% of the jobs can be 100% automated, there is still need
for human buy in for almost all adoption.

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dilemma
Automation will create countless jobs.

How? Take retail as an example. Sure, an online store is cheaper to set up and
run. Until every company has a web shop and you need to advertise to drive
traffic, requiring a large ad budget and a marketing team just for digital.
E-commerce becomes table stakes, and how you really stand out as a brand today
is by opening physical stores that improves customer experience and brand.

In the same way, automation will cut jobs until it is ubiquitous. Then,
searching for competitive advantage, firms will find new ways of adding value
and hire people to do so.

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RickS
Re your comment:

>how you really stand out as a brand today is by opening physical stores that
improves customer experience and brand.

How you really stand out as a brand today is by being better and faster than
what's on amazon, which is hard as nails and has little to do with physical
retail.

Re what your comment misses:

A whole lot of people drive trucks, cook food, and balance books. Those people
will be jobless in our lifetime. (if anyone has advice on how to bet big on
this, please share)

