Farmers at risk due to automation

Filipino farmers are most likely to be vulnerable to automation and the poor and less educated Filipinos likely at risk, too.

This was according to the preliminary results of an ongoing study conducted by the Asian Institute of Management (AIM), which seeks to determine which workers are at risk in the fourth industrial revolution.

The agriculture sector, which is made up mostly of farmers, is the most at risk among other sectors, with a 90-percent average probability of being vulnerable, results showed.

“The data we have here are not really meant to shock. They’re just meant to start a conversation,” AIM associate dean Jamil Francisco said in a forum on Wednesday.

“It doesn’t give you the percentage of jobs that will be taken out. It’s just the probability that the jobs may be technically automatable,” he said.

Furthermore, the less educated, those with low income band and those aged 15 to 24 are also most vulnerable, with their respective average probability estimated at 80 percent, 82 percent and 76 percent, respectively.

However, the risk of losing opportunities due to automation lessens for Filipinos who are more educated, more affluent and even older.

For example, those aged 65 years or older are estimated to be only 65 percent vulnerable, and those who have a college degree or higher only have a 46-percent risk.

The study, which might be finished in a month, is based on a US research that calculated the probability of automation for over 700 US occupations, Francisco.

Jobs are not technically automatable, but tasks are. Therefore, the study looks into tasks that are automatable, which means those at risk are jobs which have more of those kinds of tasks.