Revisiting the risk of automation

Melanie Arntz, Terry Gregory and Ulrich Zierahn-Weilage

Economics Letters, 2017, vol. 159, issue C, 157-160

Abstract: In light of rapid advances in the fields of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics, many scientists discuss the potentials of new technologies to substitute for human labor. Fueling the economic debate, various empirical assessments suggest that up to half of all jobs in western industrialized countries are at risk of automation in the next 10 to 20 years. This paper demonstrates that these scenarios are overestimating the share of automatable jobs by neglecting the substantial heterogeneity of tasks within occupations as well as the adaptability of jobs in the digital transformation. To demonstrate this, we use detailed task data and show that, when taking into accounting the spectrum of tasks within occupations, the automation risk of US jobs drops, ceteris paribus, from 38 % to 9 %.

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Robotics; Automation; Jobs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J23 J24 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (196)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:159:y:2017:i:c:p:157-160

DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2017.07.001

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