The robots are coming! No, not to mow us down or enslave us – not that we know of, at least – but to take our jobs.

Which jobs? Robotics and economists from Lausanne, Switzerland, have that trying to determine† If your job is at risk, those same researchers also have a way out: via a program you can see which field of work that is less easy to automate can best be retrained.

Automatability Score

In any case, the problem is real, says Henk Volberda, professor of strategic management and innovation at the University of Amsterdam. On the one hand, the most recent Future of Jobs Report, in which Volberda herself is collaborating, that more jobs will be created as a result of robotization than will disappear. However, he continues: “The people who lose their jobs cannot simply be used for the jobs that will be added. Half of the working population will have to be retrained and retrained – and that is not just a course.”

In that light it is therefore interesting that the Swiss researchers have tried to estimate which jobs are most at risk of disappearing. They looked at about a thousand of them, and determined which skills and knowledge are crucial for those professions. They also looked at the extent to which robots are expected to master these skills in the near future.

Ultimately, this results in an ‘automability score’: a number between 0.43 and 0.78. The occupation with the lowest score is physicist. People who work in a slaughterhouse are most likely to be replaced by robots.

‘Completely ridiculous’

The researchers also determined which profession with a lower score you can switch to without having to learn too much. Bee this browser program you can enter your own job and view your advice.

Those advices just don’t seem to be very brilliant. Are you a reporter or correspondent? Then there is a score of 0.58. Too high? Then let yourself be retrained as a teacher in law (0.53), physicist (0.43) or mathematician (0.50). But would that really be the smartest move for any journalist, from royalty to sports reporter?

Also Volberda entered his job, business educator (postgraduate), which turns out to have a score of 0.57. “I was advised to retrain to become a sociologist or librarian. That is, of course, completely ridiculous.”

New skills for everyone

Nevertheless, Volberda calls the scientific article and the underlying calculations interesting. He does think that “every profession will have to deal with robotisation, and that we will see interaction between humans and robots in every function. A farmer has to deal with milking robots and precision farming, an accountant with big data and verification by artificial intelligence. That means everyone will need new skills to work with robots and AI. Whether you are a journalist, business administrator or sociologist.”