Will Smart Machines Kill Jobs or Create Better Ones?

In one vision of the not-too-distant future, robots handle half of all work tasks, leaving legions of humans unemployed and insecure. In another scenario, those same technologies revolutionize rather than reduce opportunities for people, creating jobs that have yet to be imagined. Such are the stakes as a new wave of automation reshapes the workplace, accelerated by the pandemic.

Advances in artificial intelligence, or the capability of machines to learn by ingesting large amounts of data, are driving a rethink of what jobs only humans can do. The changeover has already started. Sales of professional service robots -- those used for nonindustrial functions such as logistics, inspections and maintenance -- reached 271,000 units in 2018, up 61% from 2017, according to the International Federation of Robotics. There are now 2.7 million industrial robots operating in factories worldwide, and the federation expects that to increase to 4 million by 2022.