The robot revolution will take 5 million jobs from humans

The "Fourth Industrial Revolution" is already underway, according to a report from the World Economic Forum, which is focusing on how technological change is reshaping the workplace and global economies at its meeting this week in Davos, Switzerland. Developments in fields including robotics, big data, and artificial intelligence will change workplaces and the required different skills from workers in the years to come, according to "The Future of Jobs" report.

Not everyone will be impacted equally, with the report concluding that the jobs most at risk are office and administrative roles. Other industries with negative job outlooks include manufacturing and production, the arts and entertainment, construction and extraction, and installation and maintenance. Overall, automation and robotics will cause 5.1 million job losses over the next five years, the researchers found.

"As entire industries adjust, most occupations are undergoing a fundamental transformation," wrote World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab and managing board member Richard Samans in the report. "While some jobs are threatened by redundancy and others grow rapidly, existing jobs are also going through a change in the skill sets required to do them."

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