Changes looming for workers as robotics, AI enter new phase

Industries from health care to the legal sector face being being disrupted by the latest advances in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), an expert warns, prompting a renewed warning in the wake of Donald Trump's US election victory. Jon Williams, an analyst with professional services firm PwC, said governments in Australia need to have a serious debate about how to prepare for huge changes in the workforce. "I think over the next couple of years, governments have to develop policies that allow them to support the development of new jobs and new industries or we'll see what we saw in the recent US election, where there's a huge disaffected group whose job in a factory disappeared and they haven't been able to replace it," Mr Williams told the ABC. "The next five to 10 years will see jobs in the professions, in medicine, in the legal profession, in professional services starting to be replaced by computers and robots and machine learning." Seven months after the biggest robotic drug dispensary in the southern hemisphere went live at Perth's Fiona Stanley Hospital, pharmacist Ken Tam is keen to talk up the benefits.