Afternoon Must-Read: Cardiff Garcia: Routinous, Rouinouis

Cardiff Garcia: Routinous, Rouinous: “The chart comes via this recent note from the Dallas Fed…

…and the theme will be familiar to those who have read the earlier work of Frank Levy, Richard Murname, and David Autor…. These were mainly middle-income jobs, and as their share of the work force declined, the nonroutine jobs at opposite ends of the wage spectrum–nonroutine cognitive and manual jobs — replaced them…. Another worry is that even jobs that were once considered impossible to automate because of their distinctly ‘human’ qualities might themselves be vulnerable…. Food service and retail jobs are being replaced by kiosks. Machine intelligence is already changing the legal industry. Robots will take over some pattern recognition duties and surgery from doctors. Driverless cars will replace long-distance truck drivers…. What is nonroutine to a human will one day be (by definition?) routine to a machine….”