The Next 9 Jobs That Will Be Replaced By Robots
Are humans becoming obsolete in the workforce? All signs point to “yes.”
As IBM’s Watson proved on Jeopardy, robots are becoming smarter than people. They also make fewer mistakes and they don't get bored.
By 2013 there will be 1.2 million industrial robots working worldwide — that’s one robot for every 5,000 people, according to Marshall Brain, founder of How Stuff Works and author of Robotic Nation.
Robots are currently analyzing documents, filling prescriptions, and handling other tasks that were once exclusively done by humans.
Watch out pharmacists: robots have filled 350,000 prescriptions without error at two hospitals.
Who could be replaced: Pharmacists
Here’s why: The next time you drop off a prescription order, you might see a robot behind the counter.
The UCSF Medical Center recently launched an automated, robotics-controlled pharmacy at two UCSF hospitals.
Once computers at the new pharmacy electronically receive medication orders from UCSF physicians and pharmacists, the robotics pick, package, and dispense individual doses of pills.
Machines assemble doses onto a thin plastic ring that contains all the medications for a patient for a 12-hour period, which is bar-coded.
The pharmacy system, which was phased in over the past year, so far has prepared 350,000 doses of medication without error.
This fall, nurses at UCSF Medical Center will begin to use barcode readers to scan the medication at patients’ bedsides, verifying it is the correct dosage for the patient. The automated system also compounds sterile preparations of chemotherapy and non-chemotherapy doses and fills IV syringes or bags with the medications.
Lawyers, collect all the money you can right now: “E-discovery” software can analyze documents faster and cheaper than humans.
Who could be replaced: Lawyers and paralegals
Here’s why: Instead of paying an army of lawyers and paralegals to review documents, software can do the job in a fraction of the time for a fraction of the cost.
The New York Times reported that Blackstone Discovery of Palo Alto, CA provided software that helped analyze 1.5 million documents for less than $100,000.
"From a legal staffing viewpoint, it means that a lot of people who used to be allocated to conduct document review are no longer able to be billed out,” Bill Herr, a lawyer, tells the New York Times. “People get bored, people get headaches. Computers don’t.”
Chauffeurs and bus drivers won’t be needed either: Google’s self-driving test cars have driven 1,000 miles without human intervention
Who could be replaced: Drivers
Here’s why: Google announced last fall that it was working on automated cars as a way to increase safety and help humans reduce the time spent commuting to work.
With human supervisors in the passenger seat, seven test cars have driven 1,000 miles without human intervention and more than 140,000 miles with only occasional human control.
“Our automated cars, manned by trained operators, just drove from our Mountain View campus to our Santa Monica office and on to Hollywood Boulevard,” said Google engineer Sebastian Thrun. “They’ve driven down Lombard Street, crossed the Golden Gate bridge, navigated the Pacific Coast Highway, and even made it all the way around Lake Tahoe."
