Knowledge based and technocratic professions are most at risk from software. House painters, plumbers and such will eventually be in the firing line, but this will take longer, as hardware that can compete with the dexterity of a human body lags far behind software development, and AI development.
As it is, a vast percentage of trading on the stock market floor is now carried out by computer agents. So are document searches in legal departments. Many of these applications, while removing people from employment, will simultaneously will open up new opportunities, so that new types of job will spring up, as a result of the increased productivity.
Here is an example of the type of work that is currently being taken over by robots in labs the world over: Indeed, in many cases, reactions are carried out - modeled - inside the software itself - but for some very complex and poorly understood interactions, real life experimentation is still needed:
As it is, a vast percentage of trading on the stock market floor is now carried out by computer agents. So are document searches in legal departments. Many of these applications, while removing people from employment, will simultaneously will open up new opportunities, so that new types of job will spring up, as a result of the increased productivity.
Here is an example of the type of work that is currently being taken over by robots in labs the world over: Indeed, in many cases, reactions are carried out - modeled - inside the software itself - but for some very complex and poorly understood interactions, real life experimentation is still needed:
"one employee needs approximately two weeks to process 16 samples (of experimental glass recipes).
Researchers of the Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research ISC in Würzburg have developed a unit that carries out all these steps automatically. "It needs only 24 hours to process 16 samples," says Dr. Martin Kilo, manager of the expert group for glass and high-temperature materials at the ISC. "For this reason we are able to develop glass elements more cost-effectively than previously, by up to 50 percent."
Another example is the massive surge in scholarship and productivity that is resulting from the application of AI to the fragmented documents of the Cairo Geniza, a huge repository of Jewish texts scattered across the globe, mostly in fragmentary form. On the one hand, researchers are being put out of a job, one that could have provided fodder for generations of academics. On the other hand,the raw material available to be analysed on a meta level has jumped exponentially - providing resources that will attract funding, and more employment of specialists. Similar progress has been made using software with the Herculaneum papyri, but here huge technical obstacles to reading the unrolled remaining scrolls have yet to be surmounted.
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