Major economies are on the "cusp of an AI revolution" that could trigger job losses in skilled professions such as law, medicine and finance, according to an influential international organisation. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said the occupations at highest risk from AI-driven automation were highly skilled jobs and represented about 27% of employment across its 38 member countries, which include the UK, Japan, Germany, the US, Australia and Canada. The body said it was "clear that the potential for [AI-driven jobs] substitution remains significant, raising fears of decreasing wages and job losses". However, it added that for the time being AI was changing jobs rather than replacing them. "Occupations in finance, medicine and legal activities which often require many years of education, and whose core functions rely on accumulated experience to reach decisions, may suddenly find themselves at risk of automation from AI," said the OECD.

You could soon see self-driving buses and delivery vans on UK roads as the government launches a £40m ($50m) competition to bring this technology to the market. The funding to kick-start commercial self-driving services, such as delivery vehicles and passenger shuttles, will help bring together companies and investors so that sustainable business models to be rolled out nationally and exported globally. The Commercialising Connected and Automated Mobility competition will provide grants to help roll out commercial use self-driving vehicles across the UK from 2025. Types of self-driving vehicles that could be deployed include delivery vans, passenger buses, shuttles and pods, as well as vehicles that move people and luggage at airports and containers at shipping ports. The competition aims to unlock a new industry that could be worth £42bn to the UK economy by 2035, potentially creating 38,000 new skilled jobs.

Recently, Microsoft announced that it was terminating dozens of journalists and editorial workers at its Microsoft News and MSN organizations. Instead, the company said, it will rely on artificial intelligence to curate and edit news and content that is presented on MSN.com, inside Microsoft's Edge browser, and in the company's Microsoft News apps. Explaining the decision, Microsoft issued a statement to the Verge. The statement reads: "Like all companies, we evaluate our business on a regular basis. This can result in increased investment in some places and, from time to time, re-deployment in others. These decisions are not the result of the current pandemic."

Recently, Microsoft announced that it was terminating dozens of journalists and editorial workers at its Microsoft News and MSN organizations. Instead, the company said, it will rely on artificial intelligence to curate and edit news and content that is presented on MSN.com, inside Microsoft's Edge browser, and in the company's Microsoft News apps. Explaining the decision, Microsoft issued a statement to the Verge. The statement reads: "Like all companies, we evaluate our business on a regular basis. This can result in increased investment in some places and, from time to time, re-deployment in others. These decisions are not the result of the current pandemic."

Until recently, when automated technologies emerged there was a gap between the laborers it replaced and the decision-makers who implemented it. The CTO for a car manufacturer could safely implement factory automation that laid off portions of the workforce five steps below him without fearing for his own livelihood. But as AI has matured, it's begun to climb the corporate ranks, going after positions that require advanced degrees and high IQs. No longer do the higher-ups make decisions that result in the lower-downs being laid off. Instead, disruptive startups are offering AI services that can replace entire professions with lower prices and more precise results.

Summary: Artificial intelligence has arrived. The mid-twentieth century horse apocalypse shows us what it might do to employment. It is history's rebuttal to the pollyannas about tech. This is a follow-up to yesterday's post -- Films show us how smart machines will reshape the world. "We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run."

Campaign rhetoric will calm down. People will return to their daily lives and America will go back to focusing on its future. Trump's victory, largely led by the voices that got ignored by the previous administrations, provides a clear mandate for the Trump administration. The minor problem: when it comes to technology, the Trump mandate is mostly silent. The major problem:technology strategy by the Trump administration can be at odds with the low-to-medium skilled job creation promise on one hand or lead to decline in American competitiveness on the other hand.

About half of millennials looking for work are interested in jobs that carry a risk of automation, a new study suggests. The findings indicate the youngest and most educated generation in the American workforce isn't necessarily more robot-proof than older workers, who tend to be portrayed as the primary victims of automation. "Millennials show a considerable amount of interest in occupations that face a threat of automation," said Daniel Culbertson, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab, the research institute attached to the international job site, and the author of the report. "That gets lost when people talk about millennials being so highly educated and more interested in tech roles." A college degree doesn't protect against robot rivals because even well-paid, highly skilled jobs could shrink or vanish in the near future, he said. Recent graduates who land high salaries aren't impervious if their job is characterized by repetitive tasks and decisions.

Every Artificial Intelligence researcher has probably a vision of how intelligent machines will reshape the world. My idealistic view is one in which automation maximizes people's freedom by giving us more time to concentrate on the things we enjoy the most. Research in all areas is astonishing: we live better and longer, and our planet has started to heal. Robots lead to superlative boosts in productivity, and an unprecedented abundance reduces tensions amongst people. We have more time to learn and inform us, and machines enable us to manage much more knowledge, so we take better decisions.

The report anticipates economic effects across several fronts. AI, like any new technology, is key to growth because it increases output without requiring increases in labor or capital. "In the last decade, despite technology's positive push, measured productivity growth has slowed in 30 of the 31 advanced economies, slowing in the United States from an average annual growth rate of 2.5% in the decade after 1995 to only 1.0% growth in the decade after 2005," the report states. Any increase in aggregate productivity from adopting artificial intelligence would be a welcomed change. But the resultant job automation is causing alarm.