How To Avoid Being Replaced By A Robot

The fear of job loss due to automation is no longer relegated to only physical-labor manufacturing jobs and relatively simple transaction-based, customer-service workers (i.e., bank tellers, grocery store clerks, and travel agents). Companies are increasingly adopting sophisticated "cognitive" technologies across a new swath of knowledge-worker jobs in fields such as finance, health care, and insurance. However, figuring out what this increased adoption rate really means seems elusive. Special reports and articles from respected economists and IT professionals present divergent and ambiguous views concerning whether or not automation will displace millions of knowledge workers. In a recent New York Times Magazine article, "The Robots Are Coming for Wall Street," executives from Goldman Sachs and Barclays bemoaned and praised a growing trend of financial analysts becoming displaced by smarter, big data-oriented software.