Education and Skills

The skills you'll need in the workplace of the future? Why not ask a robot

A technician makes adjustments to the "Inmoov" robot from Russia during the "Robot Ball" scientific exhibition in Moscow May 17, 2014. Picture taken May 17, 2014.

Researchers exploring the future of the workplace plan to ask machines what they think. Image: REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin

Jason Karaian
Senior Europe Correspondent, Quartz

A few years ago, Michael Osborne and a colleague at the Oxford Martin School caused a stir when they published research suggesting that 47% of jobs in the US are at risk of being replaced with robot labor. Subsequent studies suggest closer to 10% of jobs in developed countries could be automated, which is only marginally less worrying for workers.

What isn’t in doubt is that advances in algorithms and robotics will transform the workplace, with both rote manual labor and higher-level cognitive tasks soon to be performed by machines. Robotics companies, keen to avoid the insinuation that their products take jobs from humans, talk a lot these days about “co-bots” (collaborative robots). Humans and robots will increasingly collaborate, they say, with humans freed to do more productive, fulfilling tasks thanks to machines taking on the grunt work.

Osborne’s latest project aims to predict what skills—independent of specific jobs—will be in highest demand among employers in 2030. “A child starting education this year will enter a jobs market very different from what we see now,” says Mark Griffiths, research head at Pearson, the publishing and education company partnering with the Oxford academic in the research.

To determine what skills workers will need in an increasingly automated workplace, researchers–appropriately enough–plan to ask the machines.

Osborne, Pearson, and innovation nonprofit Nesta will run a series of workshops later this year with businesses, academics, futurists, and others with opinions about the future of work. These meetings in the US and UK will provide the raw material for a machine-learning algorithm, which will filter and refine the humans’ predictions. A report of the findings will be released early next year.

The algorithm will cross-reference what jobs humans think will be in high demand in 2030 with a large database of job-specific skillscompiled by the US Department of Labor. For example, accountants,according to the database, need to master more than 30 skills and abilities, including things like “critical thinking,” “systems analysis,” and “inductive reasoning.”

Based on initial feedback from the workshops, the algorithm will identify “subtle interdependencies” in the skills required for the jobs that people think will be prevalent in the future, Osborne says. The computer will then propose other occupations for the experts to rate and debate during later sessions. “The algorithm is always going to be testing the labels that human experts provide,” he adds.

Jobs in the future will require “mixes and depths of skills that are currently rare,” according to Osborne. Educators and policymakers need to prepare young people now so they’re prepared for this brave new world by the time they graduate, and not be beholden to job profiles and expectations that exist today. That’s why it makes sense to ask machines how we can be of best use, says Hasan Bakshi of Nesta. “It pares down the biases if left purely to humans.”

Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

Sign up for free

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

Stay up to date:

Innovation

Related topics:
Education and SkillsEmerging TechnologiesLeadership
Share:
The Big Picture
Explore and monitor how Innovation is affecting economies, industries and global issues
A hand holding a looking glass by a lake
Crowdsource Innovation
Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale
World Economic Forum logo
Global Agenda

The Agenda Weekly

A weekly update of the most important issues driving the global agenda

Subscribe today

You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in our emails. For more details, review our privacy policy.

Why younger generations need critical thinking, fact-checking and media verification to stay safe online

Agustina Callegari and Adeline Hulin

October 31, 2024

Skills for the future: 4 ways to help workers transition to the digital economy

About us

Engage with us

  • Sign in
  • Partner with us
  • Become a member
  • Sign up for our press releases
  • Subscribe to our newsletters
  • Contact us

Quick links

Language editions

Privacy Policy & Terms of Service

Sitemap

© 2024 World Economic Forum