Will automation kill as many jobs as is feared? A widely cited Oxford University study predicts that 47% of  jobs could be automated in the next decade of two. Price Waterhouse pegs the U.S. risk at 38%. McKinsey estimates that 45% of what people are paid for could be automated using existing technology!

A new MIT study finds that 670,000 manufacturing jobs alone have already been lost to robots. The number is expected to quadruple in the next decade alone!
No less than Tesla's Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Stephen Hawking fear the loss of jobs will cause world cataclysm.

In the coming two decades, in what situations will humans still be preferable to a robot? Might that even offer implications for how we might live today?
Let’s start with jobs likely to be eliminated, starting with the present.
Already, don’t you prefer a ATM to a teller, self-checkout to the supermarket checker, drive-through tolls rather than stop for the toll-taker, automated airline check-in rather than waiting for a clerk, shopping on Amazon rather than fighting traffic, parking, and the check-out experience with a live clerk, assuming the store has what you want in your size? Indeed, malls are closing while online retailers led by Amazon are growing.

Further killing employment, the costs of hiring a person are increasing: Increased Social Security limits and Workers’ Compensation costs, paid family leave, ObamaCare or its replacement, living wage ordinances, and employee lawsuits. All that makes employers more likely to invest in automated solutions. After all, apart from the cost saving, robots never take a day off, never come in late, are competent without training (and machine learning is making robots self-teaching,) make fewer errors, never quit and have to be replaced and retrained, never steal from the employer, never go on strike, never sue for sexual harassment, racial discrimination, or wrongful termination, and are never annoyed at a co-worker, customer, or you.

Ever more manufacturing, if not offshored or in-shored to low-cost states, is automated. A New York Times headline reads: “U.S. Textile Plants Return, With Floors Largely Empty of People.” There already are humanoid robots that can move heavy boxes, walk in uneven snow, and get up when thrown to the ground. Of course, vehicle manufacture is among the leaders in robotiicization. See, for example, the Tesla plant and it's huge robots and few people—No more “Monday morning cars” built by workers who are hung over or who come to work under-the-influence. I know someone who worked at a Ford plant and said that some assembly line workers came in stoned and deliberately misassembled cars because they thought that was funny. The future of manufacturing? Well, MIT researchers have created a robot that can 3-D print a house in hours! That will not be funny for construction workers.

Agriculture is ever more automated—fewer stooping farm workers, more machines to till, plant, water, feed, and harvest. In Japan, the first fully automated lettuce farm will begin operations later this year.
As minimum wage and mandated benefits rise, fast-food restaurants especially are accelerating use of, for example, order-taking kiosks, robotic burger flippers and fry cooks, even pizza, ramen and sushi makers.  Even that fail-safe job, barista, is at-risk, Bosch now makes an automated barista. Mid-range restaurants such as Olive Garden, Outback Steakhouse and Applebee are replacing waiters with tabletop tablets. Will you really miss having your conversation interrupted by a waiter hawking hors de oeuvres and expecting a 15+% tip?

Within a decade, we’ll likely have autonomous-driving trucks, buses, Ubers, and trains that are safer and less rude than human drivers. The autonomous truck driver will never tailgate, cut you off or flip you off, drive recklessly under or not under the influence. They will never call in sick, subjecting you to a perhaps less trained substitute driver.
But what about professional-level employment? Well, millions of people who do their own taxes rely mainly or completely on TurboTax when, in the past, they needed an accountant. Even accountants use software to increase accuracy and speed. There’s little doubt that such software will grow ever more powerful, thereby further reducing the number of accountants needed.

We’ll need doctors, nurses, etc. but the speed and accuracy of computer-assisted diagnosis and treatment will reduce the number needed. For example, robots are reducing the number of surgeons and other medical professionals needed in the operating room.
Same is true of lawyers. Human nuance is required, whether in drafting a contract or appearing in court, but fewer attorneys will be needed. Already, increasing amounts of legal work—for example, sifting through massive databases, which used to be done by teams of lawyers and paralegals—is done by computer.

But what about those millions of other jobs that require human judgment, for example, the people who review medical or Social Security claims or the marketing people who decide which approaches to use? Yes, people will always be needed to resolve disputed computer-based decisions, but that’s only a fraction of the people currently working in those fields.  Robots are already being used as security guards and to interview job applicants. The Harvard Business Review reported that Fidelity and Vanguard are working on automating back office jobs and even investment advising.
What about journalism? Of course, many paying journalism jobs have been lost to the armies of "citizen journalists" willing to write for free. But software such as Quill can replace some human journalists. It collects data analyzes it, and writes a story in seconds, and the articles are more comprehensive and less biased than a human journalist's.

I'm agnostic on the future need for teachers. It's possible that no matter how immersive, no matter how interactive, no matter how individualized, no matter how cute an artificial-intelligence-based "teacher" will be, some people, and the younger the more likely, will need, want or the parents will demand a live teacher to accompany SuperTeacher. But logically, it would seem that such an automated teacher would produce better results than that obtained by the nation's live teacher, notorious for their variation in quality.

But what about the arts? There already is computer-generated fine painting and classical music.  Automated artists do have a minor limitation: At least until self-teaching computers advance enough, computers will only be able to reproduce versions of what human programmers program in. So the creative jobs will mainly be for those rare birds who can create a cutting edge that’s not only different but superior to or at least more popular with customers than are computers’ creations. Alas, even that is at-risk.  IBM's Watson has reviewed thousands of songs to identify  the sounds people like best and reviewed thousands of major publications and websites to identify the themes that move people and thus created a hit song, "Not Easy."
But what about romance? Is the premise of the movie, Her, permanently science fiction, in which a person prefers a computerized lover, not just because “s/he’s” great in bed but is a better listener and always eager to please? At a recent London university conference on sex robots, many people already would prefer to have sex with a humanoid. Robot lovers are also being touted as useful with people having difficulty finding a partner, the disabled, and sex therapy patients. In additions, robots can be a remedy for the binary assumption—that we’re man or woman, homosexual or heterosexual—Robots can be pansexual.
Many people's experience with other people, has been a net negative, even with family members. Then there’s road rage and the boss or coworker you can’t stand. More than a few people have told me they prefer their dog to people. As technology creates an alternative to ever more of what humans do, could it be that all but the most desirable people will be ever more ostracized, even attacked? Even wilder, might people program computers to kill “undesirables?”

The remaining jobs

In such a world, how can a human justify his or her existence?
Well, certainly, we’ll need some brilliant people to develop technology, plus some hands-on types to maintain them.
Although China is already using robots for child- and elder care, we'll need caretakers: companions, home-health aides, even dog sitters, to provide warmth that even an infinitely patient robot can't provide.
As mentioned, we’ll likely always need human judges to appeal computer decisions and in our courts. Note, however, there already is software that assesses a defendant's recidivism risk. It's not yet valid enough but it portends what's to come.

We'll need micro entrepreneurs to create simple small businesses to meet local needs that can't be met by computer, for example, handypersons, tutors, and personal chefs for people with special dietary needs.

We’ll need fiction writers, mainly for the immersive interactive environments that most apartments will have: all four walls, floor, and ceiling can be screens.
We'll need superstar athletes and performers. but many people crave idols and  computer-generated songs nor animated characters willt quite cut it. As today, most people will do creative and athletic activities for love but, alas, not money.
And yes, we'll need counselors and psychotherapists. While artificial-intelligence-based therapy is under development, the level of nuance in the excellent counselor will likely be refractory to computerization.Pick a niche likely to remain in-demand: dating, parenting, eating disorders, anger management. And niches likely to burgeon: interracial relationship counseling, transgender counseling, immigrant counseling.

And are a few niche careers that should be automation resistant, which many people find rewarding :
Higher education administrator. Short work year, stimulating environment. Don’t have a Ph.D? That’s often not required in, for example, student affairs: orientation, housing, extracurriculars.
Program evaluator. It’s fun to evaluate innovations, and whether in the private or public sector, most innovative programs require an evaluation. Info on this under-the-radar career: American Evaluation Association: www.eval.org.

Fundraising. Nonprofits’ lifeblood is money. And not surprisingly, among the best paying non-profit jobs is development specialist, people who specialize in extracting maximum dollars from wealthy individuals and corporations.
Investigative journalist. We'll always need some people to unearth malfeasance.
It seems clear that there won't be enough decent-paying stable jobs to go around, so we will need a guaranteed basic income paid by the Googles and Amazons of the world, although even they probably won't have enough money to provide the literally billions of people with an even tolerable standard of living, including housing, food, transportation, and health care. We can only hope that technology's cost savings will sufficiently lower the cost of living. Certainly, most people will have to learn to live a less materialistic lifestyle and derive pleasure primarily from being productive, creative outlets, and relationships.
In the personal sphere, for us to compete with robots, we may all have to up our game—hotheads, whiners, etc. beware. So it might not be a bad time for us to start working on ourselves—while we still have the chance.

Possible Futures

An optimistic scenario is that job loss will not be as great as the above studies predict. Indeed a study by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development projects only a 9% job loss in the next two decades. An argument for modest job loss is that it's  it's far easier to predict jobs that will be lost than jobs that haven't yet been invented yet. For example, no one could have predicted that Facebook in 2017 would be hiring thousands of human monitors to extirpate objectionable content.
Continuing the optimistic scenario, even if the number of jobs lost is significantly higher, that could be more than compensated for by automation's so lowering the cost of living that even if we earn little income, we'll be okay, and have lots of leisure time to boot. And it's even possible that we can embed a computer chip in our brains that will enable us to accomplish more of what we want—or least feel better about what we have.