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The World Economic Forum (WEF) stated that the advancing technology of robots, automation, and artificial intelligence (AI) will transform the labour markets as never before. The WEF warned that the technologies could cause a loss of over 5 million human jobs in 15 major developed and emerging economies by 2020.

As reported by Business Insider, these major countries include the United States, Britain, China, Germany, France, Australia, India, Japan, and Italy. WEF also further explained the net of 5 million number by stating that that 7.1 million jobs could be lost due to redundancy, automation, or disintermediation. However, more specialised areas like engineering, computing, and architecture would create more 2.1 million jobs.

According to CXO Today, a survey that led to this conclusion was conducted by ICM Unlimited, a London-based market researcher. The study, which is commissioned by Infosys, concluded that nearly half of their sample young workers in Western countries said that their education did not prepare them to do their jobs. Almost 80 percent of the participants globally said that they had to learn new skills not taught in school.

Furthermore, they acknowledge the rapid change of technology advancement. The participants also said the feel the threat of being overtaken from their jobs by robots or technology. And to compensate, the regarded learning of fresh skills as a way to keep them working instead of being replaced by automation.

The same study found that those in developing markets such as China and Brazil feel far more optimistic than those in the developed markets. Meanwhile, the study result also showed that the level of confidence the young people had in their technical skills is positively correlated with their optimism in their career prospects in the future.

The study, named "Future of Jobs", was released prior to the annual WEF meeting in Switzerland. The meeting will focus on the "Fourth Industrial Revolution" as they described it, which will elaborate the social and economic changes due to the advancements of digital technologies.

According to Tech Crunch, businesses will likely to replace some human job position with robots because they can be available to work 24/7 at a more affordable rate. In addition to that, employing robots or using automation system to do some tasks could decrease risks of security or data entry error.

This generation's technology has also seen many significant improvements, including in efficiency, flexibility, quality, and safety, compared to that of the previous century. Today's technology also gives room for more customization to adjust to the kind of work the robot is needed to do.

The "Future of Jobs" study result aligns with the claim. The report argued that jobs would be displaced in every industry, although the impact would vary between markets and industries. The biggest negative losses are predicted to be in healthcare, then energy and financial services. On the other hand, there will be a growing demand for certain kind of workers, including data analysts and specialist sales representatives.

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Artificial intelligence, Technology