JOBS AT RISK FROM TECHNOLOGY

Somewhere out there, a robot is scheming to take my job.

About a year ago, a breaking news story about a Los Angeles earthquake was fully written by a robot. Gathering data it received from the U.S. Geological Survey, an algorithm wrote and published the story on the Los Angeles Times' website less than three minutes after the trembling began.

News organizations freaked out, some labeling the event as the "rise of the robot reporter," sending all of us into a soul-searching quest to defend ourselves in the face of such a formidable adversary. "But my writing is original, and it oozes with style," many a reporter defiantly told themselves. "A data-crunching robot could never fill my position!"

At The WorldPost's Future of Work Conference, a partnership of The Huffington Post and Berggruen Institute taking place in London this week, a similar anxiety has begun to emerge -- if not with workers, then with the economists who study them.

"According to our research, 47 percent of jobs in the U.S. are at risk from technology over the next 20 years," Michael Osborne, a co-director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Technology and Employment, told me. The group's research combined U.S. Bureau of Statistics data with a complex machine-learning algorithm of its own to draw its conclusions.

For example, in retail, an algorithm might be a better predictor of customer preferences than a human salesperson thanks to the amount of data companies collect, he said. Logistics will be impacted by fast-moving advancements in autonomous vehicle technology that few took seriously just a few years ago.

"Forklift drivers, truck drivers, agricultural vehicle drivers," Osborne listed. "Those jobs could be gone very soon."

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