Job Displacement Index
Job Displacement Index
First, we separate jobs into cognitive (white collar) and physical (blue collar), and
the questions tested for several things. If you had a cognitive job, we checked
whether your job was:
And if you had a physical job, we checked whether your job was:
We asked questions that categorized physical jobs, which can be put on two
axes representing “dexterity/complexity needed” and “compassion needed”:
And the human-machine interaction is indicated below:
Another way to check the safety of your job, is to simply look it up in a list of 365
jobs. The jobs were assigned a technical probability that AI or other
technologies can do the job within 15 years. The probabilities do not indicate
that the job will be displaced, but just that large components of the job will be
technical automatable. Also, it is important to realize that this list is simply the
list of today, and that in the next 15 years, many new job types will be invented,
so there will be many opportunities as well.
The table of 365 jobs was created by combining work done at Oxford University, McKinsey,
Bain & Co, PWC, and Sinovation Ventures.
As you can see from the above analysis, there are still many opportunities for
human & AI to work together, helping to amplify and increase human
contributions.
But it is certainly not too soon to start thinking about safer jobs, lasting skillsets,
and getting some training. Even if your job appears safe for now, AI will continue
to improve, so should you.
We should accept that the routine jobs are going away. For young people in
these routine jobs, start now by finding careers that fit your strengths and that
are not easily replaced by AI. For older people, when early retirement is offered
to you, consider accepting, with gig economy and volunteering to make some
income and live a life you enjoy.
We should encourage more people to go into service careers, choosing jobs into
which they can pour their hearts and souls, spreading their love and experiences.
While AI will cause job displacement, and some temporary challenges to our
society, in the long-term, AI will undoubtedly be a boon. By replacing most/all
of the routine jobs, AI will liberate us to spend time on what we love, what we
are good at, and give us much free time to think, to love, and to enjoy our lives
Dr. Kai-Fu Lee is the Chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures and President of
Sinovation Venture’s Artificial Intelligence Institute. Sinovation Ventures,
managing US$2 billion dual currency investment funds, is a leading venture
capital firm focusing on developing the next generation of Chinese high-tech
companies. Prior to founding Sinovation in 2009, Dr. Lee was the President of
Google China. Previously, he held executive positions at Microsoft, SGI, and
Apple. Dr. Lee received his Bachelor degree from Computer Science from
Columbia University, Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University, as well as Honorary
Doctorate Degrees from both Carnegie Mellon and the City University of Hong
Kong. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE),
Times 100 in 2013, WIRED 25 Icons, Asian Business Leader 2018 by Asia House,
and followed by over 50 million audience on social media.
In the field of artificial intelligence, Dr. Lee built one of the first game playing
programs to defeat a world champion (1988, Othello), as well as the world’s first
large-vocabulary, speaker-independent continuous speech recognition
system. Dr. Lee founded Microsoft Research China, which was named as the
hottest research lab by MIT Technology Review. Later renamed Microsoft
Research Asia, this institute trained the great majority of AI leaders in China,
including CTOs or AI heads at Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba, Lenovo, Huawei, and
Haier. While with Apple, Dr. Lee led AI projects in speech and natural language,
which have been featured on Good Morning America on ABC Television and the
front page of Wall Street Journal. He has authored 10 U.S. patents, and more
than 100 journal and conference papers. Altogether, Dr. Lee has been in artificial
intelligence research, development, and investment for more than 30 years. His
New York Time and Wall Street Journal bestselling book AI Superpowers
discusses US-China co-leadership in the age of AI as well as the greater societal
impacts brought upon by the AI technology revolution.