While the story of automation in America has long been told in shuttered factories and declining Midwestern cities, the latest wave of advancements in artificial intelligence may be bring the prospect of machine replacement beyond blue collar work. Knowledge work that involves repetitive tasks or large amounts of data, such as lawyers’ often arduous document discovery process, is particularly ripe for disruption from AI. MIT economics professor David Autor says middle management positions are particularly susceptible to this new wave of automation, particularly in fields like finance and inventory management, where humans are in charge of translating data into concrete business decisions. But he also argues that displacement from machine learning is likely to create new opportunities.
Source: Time