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Prognosticator, for one, welcomes our new robot work colleagues

Kill all humans? Take our jobs? No, they just want to work with us

On a scale of one to ten on The Reg’s own fear-o-meter, concerns about a future in which humans are mere canon fodder - or even worse - sources of nutrients for robots overlords rank pretty highly, but there’s nothing to be scared about people.

It’ll all be fine. How do we know this? The folks at Forrester Research say so and when have analysis houses got anything wrong? That’s right. Never.

Far from being a legion of mechanised villians hell bent on taking our lives, not to mention our women/men, those shiny metal bastards might prove to be a benevolent force for good.

In the report, The Future of Jobs, 2025: Working Side by Side with Robots, the soothsayers predict that - contrary to popular opinion - robotics, cognitive computing, self-help kiosks and grocery store scanners will be a force for good.

“While these technologies are both real and important, and some jobs will disappear because of them, the future of jobs isn’t nearly as gloomy as many prognosticators believe,” according to prognosticator J P Gownder.

“In reality, automation will spur the growth of many jobs - including some entirely new job categories. But the largest effect will be job transformation: Humans will find themselves working side by side with those robots.”

Forecasts in which automation technologies create mass unemployment are based on “flawed assumptions”. Forrester says, somewhat unreassuringly, that ONLY 9.1 million jobs will be lost in the US by 2025, which is way down on those crazy “pundits” that have the figure at closer to 69 million.

We are sure this will come as some comfort to people working on cash tills in retail outlets, factory workers, and big data scientists.

“Most companies will benefit from the business value that automation creates. But along with these benefits come challenges - like managing a workforce that’s not fully human. Companies will need to lobby government to fund education and vocational training to provide people with the skills to work well with robots,” the report concludes.

Wasn’t Skynet supposed to help humanity when it was first created?

Humankind isn’t doomed after all, it seems - and rather than partaking in a senseless orgy of mechanised slaughter, robots will probably just scan your fruit and veg. ®

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