“Creative Destruction” is a concept thought up by Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter to describe “the way technological progress improves the lives of many, but only at the expense of a smaller few,” states Investopedia. During this process, certain industries are destroyed, but the industries that come after them create new jobs. For example, take cars, which disrupted horse transportation, and all the related industries, such as the building of carriages, that must have accompanied equestrian modes of transport. However, the automobile industry that came after added many jobs in a wide variety of fields. So what are some of the industries disrupted by tech currently and what can we expect in the future?
Industries Disrupted by Tech
Here are some industries that have already been disrupted by tech.
1. Are you still booking your travel via human agents? Probably not. You’re likely to book airline tickets directly through the relevant airlines or via multiple sites, such as Expedia. And the same holds true for accommodation – nowadays you might use Airbnb or a site like Booking.com.
2. The financial industry has been hit hard by tech, from stockbroking to the reduction of human bank tellers. There are online trading websites like eTrade and even robo-advisors, which offer financial advice with minimum human intervention.
3. It’s well-known that the print industry has suffered terribly at the hands of tech. Newspapers have seen steadily-declining circulations. However, that’s probably just the start. Computer software will likely produce news stories as we move into the future.
4. Job recruiters have certainly seen their skills falling by the wayside. Websites like LinkedIn, Indeed and Monster, where job seekers can get masses of information about vacancies and potential salaries, have taken over.
5. Warehouse workers. Watch this this 3-minute video to see how robots can replace human workers in a warehouse. In fact, back in 2016, the Internet retailer Amazon was a leader in warehouse innovation with their fleet of 30,000 robots operating as an automated workforce.
And here are some industries that are in the process of being disrupted.
6. Wedding planners are on the out. Despite the fact that the wedding industry grew from $72 billion to $76 billion last year, Americans are spending less on wedding planners, reports Inc.. Younger people, who are very tech savvy, are very comfortable using wedding planner apps, such as The Knot, as well as various startups (Joy let’s guests manage their guest lists and RSVPs) to get the job done.
7. The call centre industry – Cristian Rennella, CEO and co-founder of Colombia-based elMejorTrato.com, states that the call centre industry will be replaced by AI. He says: “Thanks to Artificial Intelligence through deep learning with Google’s TensorFlow platform, we were able to automate 56.9 percent of queries. In this way, the user receives their response in seconds and our team only has to answer those questions that were never consulted before.”
Now what about the industries that are likely to be disrupted in the future? Yuval Harari, the famous Israeli historian and author of 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, states in GQ that we assume that “AI will kind of reach its maximum capacity by 2025, which is extremely far from the truth. We’re not even approaching the full capacity of AI. It’s going to just accelerate. So yes, we will have these huge changes by 2025—but then we’ll have even bigger changes in 2035, and even bigger changes in 2045, and people who have to repeatedly re-adjust to these things.”
Here are some industries likely to be disrupted in the future.
8. Bookkeepers have a 97.6% chance of being automated. Whether your job is at risk from AI generally depends on four variables: does your job require that you come up with clever solutions, do you have to personally help others, does your work require negotiation and, interestingly, does your occupation need you to squeeze into small spaces (i.e. jobs that are routine, repetitive and predictable are more likely to be replaced)?
9. Lawyers are not on a winning wicket – they may well need to reinvent themselves sooner rather than later. In a key study, 20 corporate attorneys specializing in corporate law and contract review competed against AI to spot mistakes in Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs), reports Hackernoon. The outcome: AI achieved 94% accuracy versus 85% accuracy from the lawyers. Plus: it took the lawyers 92 minutes on average, whereas AI could spot errors in a staggering 26 seconds!
10. Medicine is a big one. AI is likely to be even better at diagnosis than doctors. In fact, last year, reports Inc., Stanford researchers developed a program to distinguish between cancerous and non-cancerous moles with more than 90% accuracy – that beats the human dermatologists. The researchers fed the system more than 130 000 images of moles and lesion, some of them cancerous. The system could ultimately be installed on smartphones. And there are other programs in the pipeline: Freenome, a startup, is looking at technology that could detect cancer in the body, including its location and type, using only blood samples.
Clearly, we can expect the number of industries disrupted by tech to increase over the upcoming years. Yuval Harari says: “Unless you are 80 years old or something, you will have to repeatedly reinvent yourself in the coming decade – you’ll probably change your job a number of times.” Perhaps it’s best to think of tech as a job creator, and not a destroyer. And remember, it’s never too late to learn something new. If you want to learn programming skills to stay relevant in the future, consider HyperionDev’s online coding bootcamps in Full Stack Web Development, Mobile Development and Software Engineering.
