AI and robots will destroy fewer jobs than previously feared, says new OECD report


New research says we may have over-estimated how easy it is to automate jobs involving manual labor.

Fewer jobs are at risk of automation from AI and robotics than previous forecasts have warned, according to a report from the OECD, an inter-governmental group of high-income countries.

The new study offers a counterpoint to an influential 2013 paper by Oxford University academics Carl Frey and Michael Osborne, who warned that around 47 percent of jobs in the US were at high risk of being automated. Frey and Osborne’s research set the tone for much of the recent debate over automation, and its message has been reiterated in subsequent studies.

But, according to the OECD’s analysis, these current fears are somewhat overblown. The researchers found that only 14 percent of jobs in OECD countries — which includes the US, UK, Canada, and...

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