How to tell whether machines can do your job

There may be a way to predict which jobs are most vulnerable to being taken over by machines, says a new research paper. Two researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon University say machine learning will not spell the "end of work" for humans, but will have considerable impacts on the economy and the way people work. They have created a set of 21 questions that evaluate how suitable a task might be for machine learning based on what they know about machine learning systems' current and future capabilities. They published their paper Thursday in the journal Science. Managers should be able to use the rubric to evaluate the tasks performed in every job in their organization, while policymakers can use the list to determine which occupations are most likely to be affected by automation, said the paper's co-author, Erik Brynjolfsson, in an interview with CNBC.