Robots may shatter the global economic order within a decade
'The pace of disruptive technological innovation has gone from linear to parabolic,' says Bank of America
Robots will take over 45pc of all jobs in manufacturing and shave $9 trillion off labour costs within a decade, leaving great swathes of the global society on the historical scrap heap.
In a sweeping 300-page report, Bank of America predicts that robots and other forms of artificial intelligence will transform the world beyond recognition as soon as 2025, shattering old business models in a whirlwind of “creative disruption”, with transformation effects ultimately amounting to $30 trillion or more each year.
“The pace of disruptive technological innovation has gone from linear to parabolic,” it said. Any country that fails to embrace the robot revolution will slip rapidly down the rankings of competiveness, and will be left behind.
South Korea is currently in the lead with 440 industrial robots per 10,000 employees in the manufacturing industry, followed by Japan and Germany. Britain is languishing far behind at 75, one of lowest levels in the developed world, the dark side of the UK’s low-productivity labour policies.
The report said the demand for automation is “skyrocketing” as the world’s population ages – with the number of people over 60 expected to rise from 841m to more than 2bn by the middle of the century – and as the once limitless supply of cheap labour dries up in Asia.
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Manufacturing wages in China have jumped ninefold since 2000, and the country’s workforce is shrinking. China is already the world’s biggest buyer of robots, making up a quarter of the global market.
The costs of robots, "care-bots" for the elderly, "agribots" to plants seeds or pick fruit, commercial drones and artificial intelligence have, on average, dropped by 27pc over the past 10 years, and are expected to fall a further 22pc by 2005.
HT: I think Barry Ritholtz had this.
ValueWalk did as well
