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Software Developers has 4%, but Computer Programmers more than 10 times higher. Given that this titles happen to be used interchangeably, I take those numbers w

Software Developers has 4%, but Computer Programmers more than 10 times higher. Given that this titles happen to be used interchangeably, I take those numbers with a grain of salt.

robpethick 9y ago
They are strange but the numbers have come through from the original paper. Appendix starting on pg 62 http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/future-of-employment.pdf http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/future-o...
BugsJustFindMe 9y ago
A brief dig through different occupations reveals that much if not all of this is made up garbage not worthy of rational consideration. Technical writers are 89%, maids and housekeepers are 69%, but "commercial pilots" are 55% and "airline pilots, copilots" are only 18%? Hah. Sure. 30% for "Zoologists and Wildlife Biologists"? 20% for "Funeral Service Managers, Directors, Morticians, and Undertakers"? 34% for "Detectives and Criminal Investigators"? 28% for "Athletes and Sports Competitors"? What?
- andrepd 9y ago
  Only 0.4% for physicians?
- whatusername 9y ago
  1.2% for pharmacists 95% for Landscaping and Groundskeeping Workers
- CannisterFlux 9y ago
  Musical Instrument Repairers and Tuners are 91% "You are doomed". Off-the-shelf instruments are notoriously badly set up, and that'd probably be the kind of "good enough" level that robots could get to. For anything more organic you'd need a human luthier or whatever. After all a human is going to play the instrument, not a robot, given musicians themselves are at a 4% "totally safe" level. Barbers are at 80%. The amount of R&D that would be needed couldn't be justified by the low waged worker the robot would replace ($24k avg apparently). There's just so much hidden complexity with all these fine-motor skill jobs. It reminds me of those old physics problems "assuming a perfectly spherical head...". Nice idea, but in practice the incentives to create a robot barber just aren't there.
  - dagw 9y ago
    Musical Instrument Repairers and Tuners are 91% I guess it's a question of how to interpret the numbers. Does it mean that there is a 91% chance that no one will work as a Musical Instrument Repairers and Tuners or that we will only need 9% or the current Musical Instrument Repairers and Tuners. The former sounds very unlikely, while the latter sounds quite reasonable.
crdoconnor 9y ago
Reading the paper it's based on (Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, Oxford Martin School) is pretty funny. It starts with them fawning over Siri, claiming that this is somehow evidence that in the future we're going to stop wanting to talk to actual humans when we call up Comcast to complain about their billing mistakes: "Advances in user interfaces also enable computers to respond directly to a wider range of human requests, thus augmenting the work of highly skilled labour, while allowing some types of jobs to become fully automated. For example, Apple’s Siri and Google Now rely on natural user interfaces to recognise spoken words, interpret their meanings, and act on them accordingly. Moreover, a company called SmartAction now pro-vides call computerisation solutions that use ml technology and advanced speech recognition to improve upon conventional interactive voice response systems, realising cost savings of 60 to 80 percent over an outsourced call center." Then they show the same amnesiac fawning admiration the financial press does when reporting what Foxconn says: "Foxconn, a Chinese contract manufacturer that employs 1.2 million workers, is now investing in robots to assemble products such as the Apple iPhone." Yes, in 2011 they started making threats to their employees about replacing a million or so workers within 3 years with some kind of super-robot: http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robots/foxconn-to-replace-human-workers-with-one-million-robots http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robot... The bizarre eemployee union dance party threat didn't exactly pan out. They employ 100,000 more people now than they did then. The core of this paper's methodology is "we asked a bunch of ML researchers how good they thought AI was and they replied "really, really good": "First, together with a group of ml researchers, we subjectively hand-labelled 70 occupations, assigning 1 if automatable, and 0 if not." Real sciencey.
TheCoelacanth 9y ago
It seems to be using BLS categories, which split what you would call a "Software Developer" into three categories "Software Developers, Systems Software", "Software Developers, Applications" and "Computer Programmers". The "Computer Programmers" category includes only the most routine of the tasks that software developers would complete, so it makes sense that it would be more likely to be automated. It is also only 20% as common as the other two categories, so you may never even have met someone who is classified as a "Computer Programmer".

Software Developers has 4%, but Computer Programmers more than 10 times higher. Given that this titles happen to be used interchangeably, I take those numbers with a grain of salt.

robpethick 9y ago

They are strange but the numbers have come through from the original paper. Appendix starting on pg 62 http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/future-of-employment.pdf http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/future-o...

BugsJustFindMe 9y ago

A brief dig through different occupations reveals that much if not all of this is made up garbage not worthy of rational consideration. Technical writers are 89%, maids and housekeepers are 69%, but "commercial pilots" are 55% and "airline pilots, copilots" are only 18%? Hah. Sure. 30% for "Zoologists and Wildlife Biologists"? 20% for "Funeral Service Managers, Directors, Morticians, and Undertakers"? 34% for "Detectives and Criminal Investigators"? 28% for "Athletes and Sports Competitors"? What?

andrepd 9y ago
Only 0.4% for physicians?
whatusername 9y ago
1.2% for pharmacists 95% for Landscaping and Groundskeeping Workers
CannisterFlux 9y ago
Musical Instrument Repairers and Tuners are 91% "You are doomed". Off-the-shelf instruments are notoriously badly set up, and that'd probably be the kind of "good enough" level that robots could get to. For anything more organic you'd need a human luthier or whatever. After all a human is going to play the instrument, not a robot, given musicians themselves are at a 4% "totally safe" level. Barbers are at 80%. The amount of R&D that would be needed couldn't be justified by the low waged worker the robot would replace ($24k avg apparently). There's just so much hidden complexity with all these fine-motor skill jobs. It reminds me of those old physics problems "assuming a perfectly spherical head...". Nice idea, but in practice the incentives to create a robot barber just aren't there.
- dagw 9y ago
  Musical Instrument Repairers and Tuners are 91% I guess it's a question of how to interpret the numbers. Does it mean that there is a 91% chance that no one will work as a Musical Instrument Repairers and Tuners or that we will only need 9% or the current Musical Instrument Repairers and Tuners. The former sounds very unlikely, while the latter sounds quite reasonable.

crdoconnor 9y ago

Reading the paper it's based on (Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, Oxford Martin School) is pretty funny. It starts with them fawning over Siri, claiming that this is somehow evidence that in the future we're going to stop wanting to talk to actual humans when we call up Comcast to complain about their billing mistakes: "Advances in user interfaces also enable computers to respond directly to a wider range of human requests, thus augmenting the work of highly skilled labour, while allowing some types of jobs to become fully automated. For example, Apple’s Siri and Google Now rely on natural user interfaces to recognise spoken words, interpret their meanings, and act on them accordingly. Moreover, a company called SmartAction now pro-vides call computerisation solutions that use ml technology and advanced speech recognition to improve upon conventional interactive voice response systems, realising cost savings of 60 to 80 percent over an outsourced call center." Then they show the same amnesiac fawning admiration the financial press does when reporting what Foxconn says: "Foxconn, a Chinese contract manufacturer that employs 1.2 million workers, is now investing in robots to assemble products such as the Apple iPhone." Yes, in 2011 they started making threats to their employees about replacing a million or so workers within 3 years with some kind of super-robot: http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robots/foxconn-to-replace-human-workers-with-one-million-robots http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robot... The bizarre eemployee union dance party threat didn't exactly pan out. They employ 100,000 more people now than they did then. The core of this paper's methodology is "we asked a bunch of ML researchers how good they thought AI was and they replied "really, really good": "First, together with a group of ml researchers, we subjectively hand-labelled 70 occupations, assigning 1 if automatable, and 0 if not." Real sciencey.

TheCoelacanth 9y ago

It seems to be using BLS categories, which split what you would call a "Software Developer" into three categories "Software Developers, Systems Software", "Software Developers, Applications" and "Computer Programmers". The "Computer Programmers" category includes only the most routine of the tasks that software developers would complete, so it makes sense that it would be more likely to be automated. It is also only 20% as common as the other two categories, so you may never even have met someone who is classified as a "Computer Programmer".