Photo: Oleksandr Rupeta/NurPhoto/Getty
In one area of the Austin airport, a whirring robotic machine has replaced baristas in making lattes and cappuccinos.
“No more lines, no more counter confusion, no more misspelled names,”Briggo,the coffee maker, says on its website.
But a new report from the intergovernmentalOrganisation for Economic Co-operation and Developmentwarns that automation and robots are far from a panacea.
Instead, these non-human replacements and other changes to the way we work, including globalization, are rapidly changing the workplace — and expected to erase or greatly change half of all jobs within the next 20 years, the report says,according to Bloomberg News.
Stefano Scarpetta, the labor director of the OECD, said in the report that the rapidity of this change is expected to be “startling.”
“Deep and rapid structural changes are on the horizon, bringing with them major new opportunities but also greater uncertainty among those who are not well equipped to grasp them,” Scarpetta said, according to Bloomberg.
This, in turn, may lead to a worsening of social and economic tensions that governments worldwide must swiftly counter, the report says.
Some of the robotic changes are already in plain view worldwide — from Boston, whereautomated cooking pots have replaced chefsat one restaurant, to Prague, where robots have replaced bartenders and waiters,according toThe Washington Post.
HBO’sJohn Olivertackled the issue of automation in a March segmentonLast Week Tonight, citing the good and the bad from robots taking over. And he riffed on how PresidentDonald Trumphas blamed other countries for “stealing your jobs,” but that Trump has been ignoring the tremendous impact machines have had on job loss.
The OECD warns it has a “very real concern” of an erasure of jobs that once ensured a middle-class way of life.
“The OECD Employment Outlook does not envisage a jobless future. But it does foresee major challenges for the future of work,” said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría,according toComputer Business Review.
An antidote to this, suggests the OECD, is more training and governments increasing worker protections, according to Bloomberg News.
source: people.com
