Artificial Intelligence is Refurbishing the Workforce

Walmart last month announced that shoppers soon might see a lot more robots in its stores — but the company wasn’t referring to toy robots or even human assistant gadgets that are available for purchase. Walmart’s new robots will be taking over repeatable, predictable and manual tasks that up to now have been carried out by human employees.

At Walmart stores, robots will scan shelf inventory and track boxes as part of the retail chain’s inventory management. Walmart is hardly alone in deploying robots or artificial intelligence to handle these mundane tasks, however. Amazon has increased the use of AI in managing its facilities, and in the not-too-distant future, many employees can expect to work side-by-side with such machines on a daily basis.

Roughly 36 million Americans hold jobs that have a high exposure to automation, according to a January report from the Brookings Institution.

Upwards of 70 percent of tasks done by human workers soon could be performed by machines. This shift could affect not only factory and retail workers, but cooks, waiters and others in food services, as well as short-haul truck drivers and even clerical office workers.

The timeline could be from the next few years to the next two decades, according to the Brookings study, but economic factors likely will play a major role. An economic downturn, which could compel corporations to seek ways to reduce costs, could result in layoffs, with workers replaced by machines. This has happened in past recessions, so it is safe to assume that the impact could be more severe with the next downturn.