Imminent workplace disruption or long-term business bonanza? Those are among the automation acceleration outcomes coming sooner rather than later. Canada needs to prepare now if it hopes to maximize that equation for its economy.
The question for British Columbia and the rest of Canada is: are we behind, ahead or even on the innovation curve to meet the challenges and reap the benefits of automation, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality and the rest of the disruptive technological waves headed our way?
In Will Robots Really Steal Our Jobs?, PwC provides a road map for what the global professional services company sees on the industrial automation front.
It identifies industry sectors that will be hardest hit by automation and when.
For example, it notes that financial services are vulnerable to automation in the short term while manufacturing and transportation have relatively high potential for job automation by the 2030s.
The portion of jobs at high risk of automation across the 29 countries covered in the report is estimated to be around 3% by the early 2020s, but that percentage jumps to almost 20% by the late 2020s and to around 30% by the mid-2030s.
Automation disruption based on gender shows that female workers will be more vulnerable to automation displacement in the short term while their male counterparts will be hit harder in the long term.
But automation has more than downsides for companies and their workers.
Opportunities are part of the equation, but only for the far-sighted and nimble.
Targeted education and business investment will be fundamental to reaping the rewards of the new digital economy.
Canada needs to move quickly and decisively now on those fronts to leverage its resource riches to invest in retraining its workforce and retooling its industrial machinery.
The real challenge for this country, however, is that moving quickly and decisively has not traditionally been a Canadian business trait.
