“American Warning: Robots Threatening White-Collar Jobs in the Age of AI”

American fears have increased about artificial intelligence developments that could topple many jobs, not only in the field of regular “blue-collar” employment, but could extend to “white-collar” managers and specialists.

“Robots and artificial intelligence are coming,” Mike Rowe, a specialist in the employment sector, warned in an interview with the American Fox News Network, which was published by Yahoo Finance today, Sunday.

“There are those who used to say that robots will destroy skilled workers, although we have not seen a robot working as a plumber or electrician,” he said, adding, “I don’t think we will see any artificial intelligence in skilled professions to this degree.”

He pointed out that “these professions are still safe from the artificial intelligence revolution.”

But industry experts are trying to predict which sectors of work will be most affected, as well as how many jobs could be replaced, and artificial intelligence expert Ben Gurtzl recently predicted, at the Web Summit, that the technology could replace 80% of jobs “in the next few years.”

The areas least exposed to AI-driven automation so far are manual labor and outsiders (agriculturists and others) or professionals.

“I’ve heard for years that robots will destroy blue-collar work, but it turns out that artificial intelligence is coming for the white-collar job,” Rowe said.

And IBM CEO Arvind Krishna announced, in recent statements, that his company will temporarily stop hiring for certain jobs that can be replaced by artificial intelligence.

He confirmed this to the same channel in statements published today: “I really believe, and I’ve said this before, that artificial intelligence will replace many clerical jobs for white-collar employees, and this is the type that I expect to replace artificial intelligence over the next five years.”

Krishna also told Bloomberg that he “expects that approximately 30% of non-customer-facing jobs will be replaced by AI within the next five years.”

changing career

For his part, Rowe encouraged “white-collar people not to panic, calling on them to see this as an opportunity to start a new career in one of the booming industries.”

He said that in many jobs, artificial intelligence cannot replace blue-collar workers, so they have to make more efforts to learn about and train for those jobs, which will not take more than 6 months.

Rowe added that moves like the one taken by IBM to pause hiring in certain fields could push people into skilled jobs.

“Although there is a stigma surrounding skilled trades, they are often the highest paying jobs,” Rowe noted, noting that “his foundation has trained about 1,700 people in skilled trades, such as welders and others.”

He emphasized that “these people earn more than 6-figure income (one million dollars) annually.”

“Nobody believes it. Nobody talks about it, because the stigmas are so obvious that the kid ended up becoming a welder,” he added.

Rowe also noted that “the changes brought about by AI have reminded workers that they are not a product of what they do,” and that “job satisfaction is not a product of your job, it is a product of your personality.”