The rise of technological unemployment and its implications on the future macroeconomic landscape

摘要

Recent technological advances in big data, machine learning, and robotics, have begun to have a negative influence on existing employment opportunities for human beings. Numerous studies have demonstrated a worrisome decline in low- and medium-income employment resulting from the replacement of human workforce with machines. A seminal study by Frey and Osborne in 2013 predicted that 47% of the 702 examined occupations in the United States faced a high risk of decreased employment rate within the next 10-25 years as a result of computerization. Despite the seemingly dystopian future foreshadowed by these numbers, the wholesale replacement of labor by machines will most likely not become a reality in the foreseeable future for an array of reasons, including the creativity required by many occupations and interventions by governments.