The high salaries of those in power are constantly in dispute with the public of many countries worldwide, but now a recent study has confirmed that a large proportion of government jobs in the UK could actually be replaced by computers and robots, according to reports. The idea behind the revelation stems from thoughts that many government jobs are paid highly for work carried out that is of no benefit to society, or sometimes even oppresses citizens. The study concluded that “many of Britain’s public service jobs are mindless enough that they can be replaced by computers and robots”, together with some highly technical jobs in the medical sector that could be replaced as well.
According to a report in the Guardian, “Almost 250,000 public sector workers could lose their jobs to robots over the next 15 years, according to a new report which claims machines would be more efficient and save billions of pounds. Reform, a right-of-centre thinktank, says websites and artificial intelligence “chat bots” could replace up to 90% of Whitehall’s administrators, as well as tens of thousands in the NHS and GPs’ surgeries, by 2030 – saving as much as £4bn a year.” Together with this, the study also found that only “Twenty percent of public-sector workers hold strategic, ‘cognitive’ roles”, which means that only one fifth of Britain’s public section jobs are “intellectually sophisticated enough to outmatch the computers of the future”, according to the report.
After concluding their findings, authors of the study then went on to make some suggestions for the government, on how to adapt to the next technology creation that is predicted to further wipe out even more public sector jobs, which could be hundreds of thousands of people out of work and replaced by machines. They said, “The report argues that public services should become more flexible by embracing a gig economy where workers support themselves through a variety of flexible jobs acquired through online platforms.In remarks that seem set to infuriate unions, a Reform press release says: “Public services can become the next Uber, using the gig economy to employ locum doctors and supply teachers.”
The total number of public sector workers who could lose their jobs to robots over the next 15 years is around 250,000, according to the report which also claims that this move would make the workings of the job more efficient, and save billions of pounds. Nurses and doctors could also lose out to able machines, as the report claims that these developed robots could outperform humans at some diagnoses and routine surgical procedures, as well as being more efficient at collecting information. The report states that “The NHS, for example, can focus on the highest risk patients, reducing unnecessary hospital admissions. UK police and other emergency services are already using data to predict areas of greatest risk from burglary and fire.” They concluded, “The new approach to recruitment would bring the profile of public sector workers closer to that of the private sector, which has three times as many under-24s in its workforce.”
What are your thoughts on this story? Please share, like, and comment on this article!
This article (Robots Could Replace Hundreds Of Thousands Of Public Sector Jobs In The UK) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and TrueActivist.com.
