Expert and Non-expert Opinion About Technological Unemployment

By Thomas J. Walsh. 2017

108 citations recorded by the source corpus.

There is significant concern that technological advances, especially in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), could lead to high levels of unemployment in the coming decades. Studies have estimated that around half of all current jobs are at risk of automation. To look into this issue in more depth, we surveyed experts in robotics and AI about the risk, and compared their views with those of non-experts. Whilst the experts predicted a significant number of occupations were at risk of automation in the next two decades, they were more cautious than people outside the field in predicting occupations at risk. Their predictions were consistent with their estimates for when computers might be expected to reach human level performance across a wide range of skills. These estimates were typically decades later than those of the non-experts. Technological barriers may therefore provide society with more time to prepare for an automated future than the public fear. In addition, public expectations may need to be dampened about the speed of progress to be expected in robotics and AI.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Economics & Operations Research, Social Sciences & Humanities

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Citations in the corpus

When Will AI Exceed Human Performance? Evidence from AI Experts (2017, background): “1The difference in medians between us and Walsh is tiny compared to differences between Asians and North Americans in our study and does not provide evidence of a substantial difference between groups of experts.”
Automation fears: Drivers and solutions (2020, background): “Furthermore, the use of ATs raises concerns regarding what individuals, companies, and social institutions should do if the automation fears are materialised into severe technological unemployment (Feldmann, 2013; Postel‐Vinay, 2002; Walsh, 2018).”
Artificial Intelligence (AI): Multidisciplinary perspectives on emerging challenges, opportunities, and agenda for research, practice and policy (2019, background): “Workforce transition Society is likely to be signi ﬁ cantly impacted by the AI technological trajectory if as commentators suggest, society achieves full automation in the next 100 years (Müller & Bostrom, 2016; Walsh, 2018).”
Fostering Graduate Employability: Rethinking Tanzania’s University Practices (2021, background): “Some studies have established that globalization, partly spurred by technological innovation, has massively disrupted economic trajectories and business models (Walsh, 2018).”