When it comes to the future of intelligent robots, the first question people usually ask is: how many jobs will they eliminate? Whatever the answer, the second question is likely to be: how do I make sure my position is not in it? Recently, a new achievement was published in the Journal of scientific robot. Robot experts from the Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland and economists from the University of Lausanne provided answers to these two questions. By combining the scientific and technical literature on robot capabilities with employment and wage statistics, researchers have developed a method to calculate which existing jobs are more likely to be performed by machines in the near future. In addition, they have devised a method to advise these high-risk occupations on the transition to less risky jobs that require minimal retraining. The results showed that in ranking 1000 occupations, "physicist" was the job with the lowest risk of being replaced by machines, while "butcher and meat packer" faced the highest risk of being replaced. In general, jobs in the food processing, construction, maintenance and mining industries appear to be at the highest risk. The fourth industrial revolution, the competition between migrant workers and robots Robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) are often called the core of the fourth industrial revolution. The continuous progress in these fields is leading robots to participate in all aspects of human society more autonomously, dexterously and safely than their predecessors. Intelligent systems have surpassed humans in tasks that once seemed impossible for machines, such as very complex go games. These advances, together with equally important breakthroughs in high-performance computing, the Internet of things and new materials, have had a significant impact on manufacturing and services. Therefore, it is expected that the whole human economy and production system will undergo extensive changes in the next few decades. (source: pixabay) Although many analysts predict that the revolution will have a positive impact on overall productivity and growth, its potential impact on employment has attracted great attention. Robotics and artificial intelligence seem promising to automate many of the tasks currently performed by humans and reduce the demand for human work in many economic sectors. It shows that this is nothing new: the past wave of automation (such as the mechanization of the textile and agricultural sectors, the introduction of industrial robots in manufacturing, and the computerization of the service sector) first increased the working population in the early stage of development, and then significantly reduced the demand for human employment labor force. In fact, in the past wave of automation, machines mostly replaced humans in low skilled, physical and repetitive work. It has been suggested that the social impact of the fourth industrial revolution will be very different, because the next wave of robots and artificial intelligence will also affect medium and high skilled jobs, including jobs with relevant cognitive and creative components, as well as the field of manual technology that has not been touched by automation so far. (source: pixabay) Although the impact on productivity and overall economic growth may still be positive in the long run, the transformation may be painful. In previous related studies, it has also predicted how much work will be automated by robots, but most of them focus on software robots, such as voice and image recognition, financial robot consultant, chat robot and so on. In addition, these predictions fluctuate dramatically with the way job requirements and software capabilities are evaluated. "In this latest study, we consider not only artificial intelligence software, but also real intelligent robots performing manual work. We have developed a system to compare the capabilities of hundreds of human and robots at work." Professor Dario floreano, director of EPFL Intelligent Systems Laboratory, said. Test your risk of being replaced by machines. What if? In order to predict the risk of most occupations being replaced by machines, the researchers studied the multi-year road map (MAR) of h2020 robot in Europe, which is a strategic document of the European Commission and regularly revised by robot experts. Mar describes dozens of capabilities required by current robots or may be required by future robots, and the scope is organized according to the categories of operation, insight, perception and interaction with humans. Mar describes dozens of capabilities that current robots need or may need in the future. The scope is organized according to the categories of operation, insight, perception, interaction with humans, etc. Then, researchers evaluate the maturity of robot capabilities through research papers, patents and descriptions of robot products, and use a well-known scale to measure the level of technological development, namely "technology readiness" (TRL). (source: EPFL) For human abilities, researchers rely on the o * net database, a widely used resource database in the U.S. job market. The database classifies about 1000 occupations and covers the most important skills and knowledge for each occupation. After selectively matching the human capabilities in the o * net list with the robot capabilities in the Mar document, the team can calculate the possibility that each existing job occupation will be performed by a robot. For example, a job requires humans to work with millimeter motion accuracy, and robots are very good at this, so the TRL of the corresponding ability is the highest. If a job requires enough of these skills, it is more likely to be automated than a job that requires abilities such as critical thinking or creativity. By calculating and ranking the automated risk index (ARI) of 1000 jobs, the results show that "physicists" are the people with the lowest risk of being replaced by machines, while "slaughterers and meat packers" face the highest risk. Figure | automation risk index of five occupations (source: Science) Figure | automation risk index of different industries (source: Science) The cost and training of a given profession can be significantly reduced by creating an alternative to the original profession, so as to minimize the risk of any profession. "The main challenge facing today's society is how to deal with automation," said Rafael lalive, a professor at the University of Lausanne who co led the study, "Our work provides detailed career advice to workers at high risk of automation, while reusing many skills acquired in old jobs to enable them to work safer. Through this advice, the government can support society to become more resilient to the wave of automation." In order to test the performance of this method in real life, the researchers used data from the U.S. Department of labor and simulated thousands of career changes according to the suggestions of the algorithm. It was found that it can indeed make workers in high-risk occupations turn to medium-risk occupations and accept relatively low-cost retraining. The researchers said that the government can use this method to measure how many workers may face automation risks and adjust retraining policies. Companies can assess the cost of improving automation, robot manufacturers can better customize products according to market needs, and the public can determine the easiest way to reposition themselves in the job market. Finally, the researchers transformed the new method and data into an algorithm that can predict the risk of automatic substitution of hundreds of jobs and suggest a flexible career transition with minimal retraining. (you can: https://lis2.epfl.ch/resiliencetorobots (public access) (Xinhua News Agency)