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Robotics and other technologies have eliminated many jobs across the global economy, but as these technologies continue to advance, they have the potential to create more engaging jobs for workers.

Robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) have been in development for decades and, for most of that time, futurists have been predicting the jobs these technologies would eliminate. Already, automation has displaced legions of bank tellers, travel agents, toll takers, cashiers, and assembly line workers.

Now robotics, AI, and modern offshoots like cognitive computing are on the verge of causing another round of profound changes to the workforce, according to Dan Barry, a retired NASA astronaut and founder of two robotics companies, Fellow Robots and Denbar Robotics. Barry spoke about the impact of these technologies at a conference hosted by Deloitte Consulting LLP last spring. Given the rapid rate at which robotics, AI, and related fields are currently evolving, he says they have the potential to replace humans in an expanding range of skilled and unskilled professions in the next decade.

According to a 2013 study of the susceptibility of jobs to “computerisation” conducted by Oxford University professors Carl Benedict Frey and Michael A. Osborne, 47 percent of total U.S. employment is at risk of being replaced by technology.¹ That number includes many professions, such as financial traders and investment advisors, that heretofore have required specialized knowledge or extensive training.²

Other jobs at risk in the short term include legal assistants responsible for discovery work and reviewing past cases, and certain health insurance administrators responsible for determining the cost of various medical procedures based on patients’ insurance policies.

“AI is starting to shine in data gathering and big data analysis. As a result, jobs that have focused on those activities, like paralegals and health insurance policy processors, will likely be gone in the next five to 10 years,” says Barry.

There is a bright side to the employment upheaval. Barry is quick to point out these same technologies will create jobs and provide people with opportunities to do more engaging, creative work. The International Federation of Robotics estimates that robotics will create 900,000 to 1.5 million new jobs between 2012 and 2016, and an additional 1 to 2 million more between 2017 and 2020.³

Barry cites the example of Marlin Steel, a steel products manufacturer, where minimum wage workers once labored bending long metal wires—a dangerous job that posed serious safety risks. Robots have since taken over this task, eliminating the risk to workers and substantially increasing the output. By scaling up production, the company was able to cut the prices of its metal products, which sent demand soaring. The workers who once spent their days bending metal were trained to supervise and maintain the many new robots required to keep up with demand.4

Barry notes that robotics technologies are also growing easier to operate. “You no longer need a software engineer to write code to get a robot to perform a task. With some of today’s robots, you simply push a button, grab the robot’s arm, and move it through the operation you want it to perform,” he explains. “The robot learns by doing, and in this manner, an assembly line worker can reprogram a robot in about 20 minutes.”

Supervising robots may not sound particularly engaging or creative, but Barry argues robots can free up people to focus on higher value work. Legal assistants who no longer have to gather scores of past cases, for instance, may spend more time with their clients, learning about their needs and the details of their cases.

Barry also believes robots could potentially transform the job of retail pharmacists. If robots can count and sort pills, and AI can uncover drug interaction issues, pharmacists could take on work akin to what they did in the 19th century: formulating personalized medications from powders, he suggests. “Think of the problems the health care industry faces getting patients who take multiple medications to stay in compliance with their dosage regimens,” says Barry. “If a pharmacist could formulate one or two slow-release pills from the six or more that many patients have to take, that could greatly increase patients’ ability to stay compliant with their medication.

Barry urges executives, especially IT and HR leaders, to begin thinking about the jobs robots and AI could do in their organizations, and retraining and transitioning those workers to fill other positions. This planning is critical to mitigating the risk of widespread technological unemployment, economic upheaval, and social disruption, he says.

“By planning these transitions and being creative about how to change a job from a mindless one to a mindful one assisted by robotics, jobs don’t have to go away,” adds Barry. “With some serious thought, we can make work more interesting for individuals, and more valuable for organizations.”