AI, robotics, and the future of jobs | Pew Research Center

This report covers experts’ views about advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, and their impact on jobs and employment.

The vast majority of respondents to the 2014 Future of the Internet canvassing anticipate that robotics and artificial intelligence will permeate wide segments of daily life by 2025, with huge implications for a range of industries such as health care, transport and logistics, customer service, and home maintenance. But even as they are largely consistent in their predictions for the evolution of technology itself, they are deeply divided on how advances in AI and robotics will impact the economic and employment picture over the next decade.

We call this a canvassing because it is not a representative, randomized survey. Its findings emerge from an “opt in” invitation to experts who have been identified by researching those who are widely quoted as technology builders and analysts and those who have made insightful predictions to our previous queries about the future of the Internet. (For more details, please see the section “About this Canvassing of Experts.”)

Key themes: reasons to be hopeful

1. Advances in technology may displace certain types of work, but historically they have been a net creator of jobs.
2. We will adapt to these changes by inventing entirely new types of work, and by taking advantage of uniquely human capabilities.
3. Technology will free us from day-to-day drudgery, and allow us to define our relationship with “work” in a more positive and socially beneficial way.
4. Ultimately, we as a society control our own destiny through the choices we make.

Key themes: reasons to be concerned

1. Impacts from automation have thus far impacted mostly blue-collar employment; the coming wave of innovation threatens to upend white-collar work as well.
2. Certain highly-skilled workers will succeed wildly in this new environment—but far more may be displaced into lower paying service industry jobs at best, or permanent unemployment at worst.
3. Our educational system is not adequately preparing us for work of the future, and our political and economic institutions are poorly equipped to handle these hard choices.

Read the full Pew report.

Hallie Siegel robotics editor-at-large

Hallie Siegel robotics editor-at-large