People who do physical jobs have been faced with job losses because of automation for several decades now. The trend has been accelerating with the automation of entire factories and the need of retrain millions of workers.
Now the automation trend is spreading into the professions, even though their jobs are often not physical. At risk are accountants, lawyers, architects, to name a few. The automation of these fields does not mean that all will lose their jobs, but it does mean that large parts of their jobs can be automated, leading to a lower demand for them. For example a recent major report for the Canadian Bar Association called "Futures: Transforming the Delivery of Legal Services in Canada that outlined a strategy to deal with transformative change in the delivery of legal services. One of the driving forces for the change was technological innovation.
Last year, CPA Canada released a report setting out Drivers of Change in the accounting profession, with a strong emphasis on technological change. Other writers have written about how mobile devices, social media and data analytics will change the profession.
Behind the rapid spread of automation into the professions is the growing power of artificial intelligence. This enables technology to replace or significantly modify jobs with more and more intellectual content.
The Pew Research Center recently did a major survey into the views of a wide spectrum of professions on this issue. The results are quite revealing.
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