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Website predicts likelihood of robot taking your job

Some of the technologies discussed here, including robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and autonomous vehicles, have many people worried, wondering if they will ultimately lose their job to advancing technologies.

There are those that suggest robots will take away jobs, while others are adamant that robots will create jobs. Really, the truth is probably a mix of the two. However, just for fun, we wanted to point out a website based on a 2013 report of robots and jobs that predicts which US jobs are most likely to be automated in the future.

Mubashar Iqbal (a developer) and Dimitar Raykov (a graphic designer) collected their data from "The Future of Employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation?" — a report published in 2013 by Oxford’s Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne. The authors implemented a technology to estimate the probability of computerization for 702 detailed occupations using a Gaussian process clarifier model. Approximately 47% of total US employment is at risk, per the report, which also added some supplementary information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

"Their methodology seems sound," Iqbal told Digital Trends, "but with all predictions there is always a margin of error and probably more so with a topic such as this, where the industry and technology is evolving so quickly. If anything, their predictions may have been too conservative."

Of course, this is not something that can be taken literally, but it may provide a general idea, or at least some entertainment for those curious. Consider the fact that the paper’s authors considered whether certain tasks would be automated, not whether the entire job would fall to robots, and that the paper has not been peer reviewed. Additionally, the report is now going on five years old, and the robotics industry is evolving at a rapid pace, so the website is anything but definitive.

That said, it’s a bit fun. Try it out here.