Replaced by robots?

There are two things I didn't realize when I decided to tackle the subject of job automation this year. The first is the ironic thing that I could have expected: it is difficult to write about the obsolescence of work if you need to work many hours. The second thing is that right now, the subject of automation is very popular. Not a day goes by without large publications printing a piece on the future of work in a world where jobs are displaced by machines.

Now, I do think that most of these articles are not seeing the problem for what it is. For example, while there is widespread acceptance that car drivers will be replaced by autonomous vehicles, the recognition of such challenges is always accompanied by a future scenario in which humans make money through creative, social or intelligent work. However, there is no reason to assume that an upcoming revolution in the cognitive and computer sciences won't also open up these "human" ventures to automation.

Still, the fact remains that the discussion on jobs and machines is really taking off, and that means that I can do some light blogging by just sharing content that others made. The following is an attempt to do so. It is a lecture on whether humans will be replaced by robots, and I think it frames the issues for the near future in a very pragmatic way. This lecture accompanies a paper that claims that about half of today's jobs can be done by computers in 20 years, which drew a lot of attention from the press.