Small Business Column: Artificial intelligence and robotics in the workplace

In this week’s column Kehlan looks at the growing influence of artificial intelligence and robotics in the workplace and how nearly half of all human jobs could be obsolete within the next few decades.

During the American presidential election we saw Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton both work hard on getting votes within the ‘rust belt’ area of America. Steel mill towns and coal districts with jobs that went somewhere else or just went altogether.

What wasn’t a significant talking point, and was missed by many commentators, was those jobs that are gone forever. Humans are being replaced by robotics and that will only increase in the next number of decades. Even if those mills and mines came back it would be hard to see anything like the numbers employed as before.