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Machines will rule workplace by 2025 : WEF
Why in the news ?
- According to a ‘Future of Jobs’ report by the World Economic Forum (WEF), in less than seven years, by 2025, machines are projected to overtake humans in workplace task hours in 12 key industry sectors.
Details
- Globally, almost half of all companies expect automation to cut their full-time workforce in the next four years.
- However, new jobs will still lead to a net gain in employment opportunities if sufficient reskilling is done.
- In India, 54% of employees in these sectors will need re-skilling by 2022, the WEF said in the report released.
- Technological changes such as high-speed mobile Internet and cloud technology, artificial intelligence, robots and automation are expected to drive a “significant shift on the frontier between humans and machines when it comes to existing work tasks between 2018 and 2022.
- In 2018, humans performed an average of 71% of total task hours across the 12 industries spanning manufacturing, services and high tech.
- By 2025, that will drop to just 48%, according to the WEF. Machines will perform the remaining 52%.
Cautious optimism
- There are grounds for cautious optimism.
- One set of estimates indicates that 75 million jobs may be displaced by a shift in the division of labour between humans and machines, while 133 million new roles may emerge that are more adapted to the new division of labour between humans, machines and algorithms.
- The authors of the report wrote, even while warning that if managed poorly, these transformations posed the risk of widening skill gaps, heightening inequality and raising polarisation.
Re-skilling
- WEF has identified the re-skilling and upskilling of employees as an urgent imperative.
- Broadly, in line with global trends, 54% of Indian workers in these industries would need re-skilling by 2022.
- Of this, while 35% would need at least six months worth of re-skilling, 10% would need more than a year of training in order to meet the demands of the new economy.
WEF
- The World Economic Forum, committed to improving the state of the world, is the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation.
- The Forum engages the foremost political, business and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas.
- It was established in 1971 as a not-for-profit foundation and is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.
Source
The Hindu.