Although the over job market in America has remained strong, the long term disruption to a wide number of careers has begun unfolding. The easiest to see are the expected job loses in transportation, with the advent of driverless vehicles, and in warehousing, where robot lifts replace the employees. Less obvious are those careers once thought of as technology proof, like journalism.
The idea that a machine can understand the complex ideas needed to form a story and to give it the tone and inflection that portray it correctly readers arrived with its first wave back in 2014. In this wave, the type of writing once reserved for cub reporters is now being replaced by computer algorithms. Often times these robots are producing the more route type of stories, for example sports updates or financial reporting for business news, but, they are also taking jobs nonetheless. They are also getting better at reporting and editing too, as “reported” in the recent New York Times article, “Rise of the Robot Reporter” hby Jaclyn Peiser.
In the end, AI will likely never end up replacing the world’s journalists, but we believe that it will seriously reduce the number or jobs in reporting and journalism. Those who wish to be a reporter in the future will need to be adaptive and continuously learning to remain relevant and avoid becoming one of those who end up being eliminated from the workforce. What are your thoughts?