People living in the British constituency Hayes and Harlington, in Greater London, will be the most affected by the upcoming Intelligence Revolution. As many as 39.3 percent of jobs in the area could, in the not-so-distant future, be completed by robots and other systems of artificial intelligence (AI), according to a new report.
Meanwhile, citizens of Edinburgh South can feel relatively secure in their professional callings. Apparently they're the least at risk with only 21.8 percent of jobs in danger of being automized over the next decade or so. Admittedly, one in five is still rather a lot.
The paper was written by UK thinktank Future Advocacy, whose self-declared mission is to "work collaboratively towards the policy changes, business practice changes, and individual behavioural changes that will ensure that AI development is beneficial to all of humanity." They hope to encourage politicians to do more to get Britain ready for the imminent job upheaval.
The researchers came to their conclusions by combining the professional make-up of each British constituency with the results of a recent PwC study into the automatability of different industries.
The PwC report found that roughly 30 percent of British jobs (and 38 percent of US jobs) are at high risk of automation. Employees are most at risk if they work in the wholesale and retail trade, manufacturing, administrative and support services, or transport and storage.
Future Advocacy found that the number of jobs that will be threatened by automation by the early 2030s sits somewhere between 22 percent and 39 percent, depending on the constituency. The regions expected to be most affected are the old industrial heartlands (the Midlands, North England, and industrial centers in Scotland); areas that have already seen high levels of unemployment in recent decades thanks to deindustrialization.
Breaking it down further, the report lists the five constituencies most at risk of automation. These are:
Hayes and Harlington [39.3 percent]
Crawley [37.8 percent]
North Warwickshire [37.1 percent]
Alyn and Deeside [36.8 percent]
Brentford and Isleworth [36.8 percent]
The above constituencies have large populations of people working in the manufacturing, and transport and storage industries.
In comparison, the five constituencies least at risk have more people employed in highly skilled occupations and industries, like education and healthcare. These are:
Edinburgh South [21.8 percent]
Glasgow North [22.2 percent]
Liverpool, West Derby [22.3 percent]
Oxford East [22.8 percent]
Wirral West [22.9 percent]
The study likens the upcoming Intelligence Revolution to the Industrial Revolution, where new technology saw a big shift from manufacturing to service jobs. So far, technology has created more jobs than it's taken, but will this continue?
As the authors pointed out, "[The UK] is well placed to reap great overall economic benefits from the development of AI, but it is not yet clear how those benefits will be shared."
