Jobs and the Future of Work

Robots are coming, but you still have the edge

A competitor holds up one of his soccer-playing robots for the camera during the Robocup tournament in Singapore

Robots are getting better. Image: June 22, 2010. REUTERS/Vivek Prakash.

Gus Lubin
Senior Correspondent, Business Insider
Share:
Our Impact
What's the World Economic Forum doing to accelerate action on Jobs and the Future of Work?
The Big Picture
Explore and monitor how Future of Work is affecting economies, industries and global issues
A hand holding a looking glass by a lake
Crowdsource Innovation
Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale
Stay up to date:

Future of Work

Robots are coming for all our jobs, but we’ve still got the edge in a few key areas.

McKinsey’s new report on the future of automation notes that humans are better than robots at: spotting new patterns, logical reasoning, creativity, coordination between multiple agents, natural language understanding, identifying social and emotional states, responding to social and emotional states, displaying social and emotional states, and moving around diverse environments.

The report named four skills where robots matched us and five where they beat us.

 Current technologies have achieved different levels of human performance across 18 capabilities
Image: McKinsey Global institute analysis

McKinsey finds that almost half of work activities globally could be automated using current technology. Of course, the robots are getting better.

Here’s a chart showing when McKinsey expects robots to pass humans on all of those skills:

 Ranges of estimated time frames to reach the next level of performance for 18 human-related performance capabilities
Image: McKinsey Global institute analysis
Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

Sign up for free

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

Related topics:
Jobs and the Future of WorkFourth Industrial RevolutionEmerging Technologies
Share:
World Economic Forum logo
Global Agenda

The Agenda Weekly

A weekly update of the most important issues driving the global agenda

Subscribe today

You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in our emails. For more details, review our privacy policy.

The green skills gap: Educational reform in favour of renewable energy is now urgent

Roman Vakulchuk

April 24, 2024

About Us

Events

Media

Partners & Members

  • Join Us

Language Editions

Privacy Policy & Terms of Service

© 2024 World Economic Forum