Automation is rapidly advancing, and while some forecasts have not come to fruition, it’s just a matter of time before we see automation in our daily lives. Automated vehicles, for example, still have a lot of hurdles, primarily 3D mapping, that need to be overcome before we start seeing fully autonomous vehicles overtake the roadways.

For many, these vehicles will kill careers.

Trucking, for example, is an industry that suffered from 3,602 deaths in 2013. Fatigue is a big issue, but there’s also a huge gap in available talent. Automated trucks will not become fatigued, breaks will not be required, and shipments will arrive faster with fewer incidents along the way.

A lot of truckers will lose their careers, but lot of lives will be saved in the process.

Automation has the potential to kill a lot of careers, and if you’re in the transportation industry, there’s a major risk that your career may be in jeopardy. But it’s not as simple as completing a task: automation lacks the human element completely.

Automation as a Supporter, Not a Replacement

The Royal Bank of Canada uses automation, and machines are growing increasingly powerful in terms of integrating into the bank’s operations. The bank claims that they will need more humans than machines due to machines acting as a supporter rather than a replacement for jobs.

What will change is that automation will create a larger need for humans in other areas of the workforce.

Automation will certainly cause some career options to be obsolete, but others will flourish as a result. Skill mobility will become a vital part of the job world.

Surgeons, for example, will be assisted by automation while carrying out a surgical procedure. Automation may be able to assess a person’s surgical needs in real-time, offer advice on what to do next or may be able to scan the procedure to alert the doctor of key medical issues that may impact a procedure.

Medical doctors can rely on big data to scan a person’s health information among trillions of data points for higher diagnosis accuracy.

Millions of Jobs Can Be Lost and Created

Change is coming, and it’s going to lead to millions of jobs being lost. Automation will complete the same task over and over again with near 100% accuracy. Human error will be eliminated, and a lot of jobs will be lost.

Transport, for example, may become obsolete.

You may enter an automated taxi or bus in the next ten years. Accidents will become less frequent, and millions of injuries or deaths will be avoided. 

Millions of people will eventually lose their jobs to automation, but we can be sure that millions of jobs will also be created. Canada predicts automation will create over 2.5 million jobs in the country, and there will also be job loss.

Will you lose your job? Maybe.

Educators, for example, will always be in demand, and technology may augment the learning experience in ways that teachers and students never imagined. Taxi drivers, on the other hand, will eventually lose their positions.

But new industries will develop in the process, and there will be a higher demand for computer programmers, network specialists and mechanics to work on the very machines that are killing jobs.