The encroachment of self-help kiosks and grocery store scanners has led doomsayers to suggest automation threatens the workforce of the future. A new report argues it will create new business sectors and new jobs as well.
By studying large companies in various industries, from Delta Airlines Inc. to Whole Foods Market Inc., as well as many startups, analysts have forecast that automation will erase 22.7 million jobs by 2025, or 16 percent of today’s total.
The prediction comes in a report titled “The Future of Jobs, 2025: Working Side-By-Side with Robots,” published by Forrester Research this week. The study’s findings were drawn from government employment data, and interviews with businesses and academics.Working Side-BY-Side with robots=ロボットと協働（？）の書籍by Forrester Researchは政府の雇用データやビジネス、アカデミー分野へのインタビューから分析している。
Automation in daily life is already prevalent and expanding beyond the grocery store scanner. Robots are now delivering room service to guests in the Aloft hotel in San Francisco, and self-service kiosks filling orders at delis rather than humans.
すでにロボットが実用化されていますね。ホテル、雑貨店、Kioskでも。
Lowe’s hardware is testing Oshbot, a robotic sales assistant that can answer questions, and show customers a floorplan of the store or lead them directly to products they seek. It was recently featured in an RT segment.
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However, the study argued that the decline in service jobs caused by increasing automation would be offset by the creation of new ones, reducing net jobs losses to only 9.1 million, or 7 percent.サービス業の減少は新しい職種がとってかわる。７％だ。
“Physical robots require repair and maintenance professionals – one of several job categories that will grow up around a more automated world,” wrote J P Gownder, the lead author in Forbes.ロボットの修理・維持の専門家を必要とする。
“That’s a net loss of 7 percent: far fewer than most forecasts, though still a significant job loss number.”それで７％減少だかそれでもかなりの失業数だ。
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Robots are defined in the study as physical robots that do manual labor on assembly lines or in warehouses. Included in the definition is sophisticated software capable of crunching large amounts of data to perform intellectual tasks such as giving medical diagnoses, analyzing the weather, or coming up with culinary recipes.
Automation will and is replacing the work of people, but the report argued for every 10 jobs automated, one new job will be created in software engineering, design, maintenance, and support or training.オートメーションが人々の仕事を奪うが、10の仕事が自動化され、新たな仕事が情報ソフト・エンジニア、デザイン、維持管理、講習などで創設される。
Gownder’ team said by 2019, 25 percent of all job-based tasks will have been offloaded to software robots, physical robots, or customer self-service automation.2019年までに２５％の仕事がソフトウェアロボットやハードロボット、顧客自動サービスによってなくなるという。
The most job losses will occur in sectors like office support, construction, and sales, with self-help services replacing cashiers, retail salespeople, and real estate brokers and agents.最も失業するのはオフィスサポート、建設、販売、キャッシャー、販売人、不動産業者など。
The report also found smart household gadgets would threaten the livelihoods of repair workers, plumbers and electricians.
“These are not white-collar jobs,” J P Gownder told WIRED. “This is the evolution of the repair person. It’s harder to fix a robot than to fix a vending machine.”修理工の革新だ。自販機の修理よりロボットの修理は難しい。
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The report found for most workers, robotic challenges would change the way people approached their daily jobs, requiring new methods of job training, management, and financial reporting systems.
Gownder’s report presents a less dire view to the one presented in the often-quoted Oxford University study of 2013 “The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation” from academics Carl Frey and Michael Osborne. Their analysis predicted robots will displace jobs at an alarming rate, finding that 47 percent of total US jobs were “at risk” of being replaced by automation.４７％のアメリカの全職種がロボットの自動化で置き換えられる可能性があるようだ。
