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the
future, brought to you by robots on rofits businesses re are for a ob market im acted by automation and say you should too
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By SY D N EY CRO MW EL L ometimes Taylor Phillips feels like he’s wearing a tinfoil hat. When he tells people robots could be coming for their j obs, it sounds like a movie premise or a doom-and-gloom prediction. But the risk is real, and Phillips believes it could happen in the next decade. “You need to start thinking about your j ob and how easy it is to do. And is there an app or something that can help you do your j ob a lot easier now? Because that’s where we are today. In 10 years, that app could be doing your j ob,” Phillips said. hillips is the creator of utureproof ama, a nonprofit to educate people about the existence of technological unemployment — the replacement of human j obs with machines and software — as well as to help Birmingham and the rest of the state get ready for the maj or shift he believes is coming for the j ob market. The idea came from his own work for a company called AutoGov, where he created an algorithm that can collect and verify information independently to determine whether a person is eligible for Medicaid. “In doing that, I always kind of had in the back of my mind, ‘ Wow, this could potentially displace a lot of people,’” Phillips said. As he began reading about technological unemployment, Phillips found studies that could spell serious trouble for the
Alabama economy. Among 4 0 j obs the Alabama D epartment of abor identified as growth areas b , hillips said 16 of them have a higher than 5 0 percent chance of being replaced by software or machines, according to a stud published b the ford artin rogramme on Technology and Employment. “As a state, we are so grossly unprepared for the next 10 years,” Phillips said. he ford artin stud , written b arl enedikt re and ichael sborne, estimates that percent of employment is at “high risk” for automation in the next two decades. A paper published in March by the National Bureau of Economic Research, written by D aron Acemoglu of MIT and ascual estrepo of oston niversit , said that for every robot per thousand workers, up to six people will lose their j obs. While many of the people he talks to imagine robots and software taking over factory or fast food j obs, Phillips said the impact will reach both blue and white collars. J obs highly susceptible to technological replacement include accountants, mechanics, truck drivers, personal care aides, clerks, dental hygienists, customer service, manufacturing and more across agriculture, health care and other fields If a j ob requires a lot of repetitive tasks, Phillips said, eventually there will be a machine that can do it with fewer costs and no human error. J oseph Baker, the creator of the Facebook group “I Believe in Birmingham,” has a strong interest in the future
NECK OF THE WOODS
DISCOVER Taylor Phillips speaks at a Futureproof Bama event. Phillips is the creator of Futureproof Bama, a nonprofit to educate people about the existence of technological unemployment — the replacement of human jobs with machines and software — as well as to help Birmingham and the rest of the state get ready for the major shift he believes is coming for the job market. Photos by Sydney Cromwell.
of technological unemployment and compared it to a new Industrial Revolution. Like individual craftsmen who were replaced by faster and cheaper factories, advancing technolog could cause career fields to drasticall shrink, leaving thousands unemployed. “When they are [ replaced] , that’s going to be pretty darn disruptive because the incentive is going to be there for companies to absolutely automate and take away those j obs,” Baker said. “If you can replace your four $ 8 0,000 a year accountants with a piece of software that will do the same thing they do and better, you have a pretty huge incentive to do that.” Fetch, a Lakeview recruiting company that opened in Jul , has embraced automation for what the feel is a better way to connect businesses and potential hires. hief echnolog fficer Jason Hutson said their website is driven b an algorithm to match ob hunters profiles with j ob postings. “We’re basically taking the need for recruiting out of hiring, Hutson said By relying on an algorithm rather than human recruiters, Hutson said, etch s overhead is much lower than a traditional recruiting agency, and their lower fees make Fetch more attractive to companies. e believe full in automation, etch founder hase Morrow said. etch has allowed hillips to use their office for utureproof presentations because they see themselves as part of that next wave of business. Morrow said while it’s hard to