Robots at Work: How will Artificial Intelligence in the Workplace affect Higher Education?

Abstract

We examine the impact of automation technology on the labor market and assess how this affects higher education. To do so, we begin by analyzing automation in the past and how it affected the labor market. In the second section, we analyze the state of the upcoming automation technology and the “human skills” it has acquired. We then analyze the education and skills relating to various occupations and link it to the data on occupational probabilities of automation. To gauge the automation probability of these skills, we assess their category based on 18 key human competencies which have been studied and have associated rates of automation potentials from a study by McKinsey Global Institute, 2017. Findings show that nearly 42% of Canadian labor is at high risk of being affected by automation and about 18% of the labor has at least 70% of their work activities that can be automated.