LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Some of the richest, smartest and most powerful humans have an important message for the rest of us as they convened this week to discuss pressing global issues: the robots are coming.
At the Milken Institute’s Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, at least four panels so far have focused on technology taking over markets to mining – and most importantly, jobs.
“Most of the benefits we see from automation is about higher quality and fewer errors, but in many cases it does reduce labor,” Michael Chui, a partner at the McKinsey Global Institute, said on Tuesday during a panel on “Is Any Job Truly Safe?”
The four-day annual conference, which began on Sunday, has 3,500 invite-only participants exploring “The Future of Human Kind.”
Technology has not only done away with low-wage, low-skill jobs, some of the more than 700 speakers said. They cited robots operating trucks in some Australian mines; corporate litigation software replacing employees with advanced degrees who used to sift through thousands of documents prior to trials; and on Wall Street, the automation of jobs previously done by bankers with MBAs or PhDs.
Read the rest of the story at Reuters.