TRENDING SCIENCE: Will you lose your job to a robot?

As intelligent robots start to become commonplace, we’re inevitably questioning how many jobs will disappear. Another question, that’s even more concerning on a personal level, is whether our job will fall victim to robotic automation and AI. A 2022 report by research and advisory company Forrester stated that more than a third of all European jobs could be at risk from automation.

Which jobs are safe, and which are not? To provide an answer, roboticists from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) and economists from the University of Lausanne have developed an innovative calculation method that was presented in the journal ‘Science Robotics’.“There are several studies predicting how many jobs will be automated by robots, but they all focus on software robots, such as speech and image recognition, financial robo-advisers, chatbots, and so forth,” explained corresponding author Prof. Dario Floreano, Director of EPFL’s Laboratory of Intelligent Systems in a press release. “Furthermore, those predictions wildly oscillate depending on how job requirements and software abilities are assessed. Here, we consider not only artificial intelligence software, but also real intelligent robots that perform physical work and we developed a method for a systematic comparison of human and robotic abilities used in hundreds of jobs.”

The team created a tool called automation risk index (ARI) that predicts how at risk 967 jobs are from automation and AI. This algorithm looks at how many requirements in a job description can be performed by a robot compared to a human. Then, the ARI ranks the importance of these abilities and evaluates how prepared robots and technology are to fill these requirements at present. Based on the results, it determines the probability of a job being automated. An ARI of 0 means that robots can’t replace any human skills. An ARI of 1 indicates that robots can replace all of them.

Chances are, if you’re reading this article, the news is good. Physicists (0.43) are the safest from automation. Slaughterers and meat packers (0.78) ranked last. Overall, food preparation, serving-related professions, building and maintenance, and construction have a relatively higher risk of being replaced by AI-powered robots compared to jobs associated with education or healthcare.As part of the research, the team developed a resilience index containing the rankings. You can search for a job title to find out its automation risk. Worried the risk is too high? You’ll also find three alternatives for a career shift that require little retraining. Let’s take slaughterers and meat packers as an example. The most resilient alternative – the job involving the least effort to switch – is a textile machine operator.

“The key challenge for society today is how to become resilient against automation,” commented corresponding author Prof. Rafael Lalive from the University of Lausanne. “Our work provides detailed career advice for workers who face high risks of automation, which allows them to take on more secure jobs while re-using many of the skills acquired on the old job. Through this advice, governments can support society in becoming more resilient against automation.”