Content area
Full Text
(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae and/or non-US-ASCII text omitted; see image)
INTRODUCTION
Top scientists and business people such as Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates have warned of mass unemployment due to the rise of Smart Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Algorithms, which we term STARA (Bort, 2014; Lynch, 2015). It is estimated that one-third of jobs that exist today could be taken by STARA by 2025 (Frey & Osborne, 2013; Thibodeau, 2014). This is due to significant improvements in robotic dexterity and intelligence, coupled with inexpensive autonomous units that have the potential to outperform humans at many manual and conceptual tasks (Frey & Osborne, 2013).
Examples of these types of technology can be seen with the popularisation of retail self-checkouts, smartphone applications, automation in accounting, the internet of things, and future developments in driverless vehicles. The cost-benefit or payback on these types of technology makes it difficult to consider the continuation of human employees in some roles. For example, a supermarket self-checkout system costs $125,000 (this cost is expected to fall and vary from country to country) for four lanes (Human-Use Experience, 2015). Depending on the country, this is generally lower than or equal to paying four minimum wage employees for an average 40-hr week for a year. Considering the self-checkout system can work 24 hr per day, 7 days a week, and the employer does not have to pay taxes, pensions, health benefits, other benefits, or give breaks to the self-checkout, it is clear which option is more economically viable for the retailer. The same will be applied to driverless vehicles once the technology is refined.
Interestingly, STARA is not being implemented into just low-paid, low-skilled positions. Sophisticated algorithms are being used in legal research: for example, the Clearwell system was programmed to analyse and sort 570,000 documents in 2 days (Frey & Osborne, 2013), a job that would have normally been conducted by lawyers and paralegals. In addition, report-writing algorithms within business and news media will become more common. Furthermore, the costs of robots with high-precision dexterity are falling significantly (Frey & Osborne, 2013).
A study of 702 occupations detailed the probability of computerisation (i.e., STARA) taking jobs. For example, jobs at risk include accountants, market research analysts, commercial pilots, customer service, sales staff,...