Most Americans believe that their jobs, and the jobs of those they live with, are safe from automation, at least for the next decade, an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll showed, with more than half of respondents saying that automation could make their work easier or more efficient in the future.
The findings suggest that while Americans express concern about how automation technology might cause some other people to lose jobs, they are less worried about its effect on themselves.
Fifty-seven percent of respondents said they thought it unlikely that they or someone in their household would be replaced at work by automation within the next 10 years, the survey found. A nearly identical proportion — 56 percent — said they consider it at least somewhat likely that their job would be improved by automation. For example, many think that such technology has made jobs safer.
The poll’s key findings echo those of other recent surveys. The Pew Research Center found in a survey released earlier this month that 70 percent of Americans believe it to be unlikely that they would lose their jobs to automation.
Those assessments might well prove accurate, according to recent analyses that foresee far fewer job losses resulting from automation compared with studies several years ago that had suggested that up to half of US jobs could be replaced over the next two decades.
A report released this month by the education company Pearson, Oxford University and the Nesta Foundation found that just one in five workers are in occupations that are likely to shrink by 2030.
Still, the AP-NORC survey found that many Americans worry about the effects of new technologies on their daily lives and the job market. Three-quarters of respondents said they think it to be at least somewhat likely that “people will be more isolated from one another.”
Most also say robots have cost jobs in factories — a view supported by academic research and data showing that factories are now producing more with fewer employees. Three-quarters foresee at least some likelihood that many retail workers are to be replaced by automation.
A wide gap also exists in how people with different levels of education respond to such questions. Americans without college degrees are twice as likely as those with degrees to say it is very likely that automation would cost them or someone in their household a job. That is in line with studies that have found that lower-skilled work is more likely to be automated.
Among the poll’s other findings are that Americans vastly prefer dealing with people, rather than machines, when they order food at a restaurant. Most Americans still are not using the latest technologies, some of which could introduce ground-breaking automation in the future, and the likelihood of whether someone has used online services and other technology tends to breaks down along educational lines.
The AP-NORC poll of 1,038 adults was conducted from Aug. 17 to Aug. 21 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak panel, which is designed to be representative of the US population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.
Respondents were first selected randomly using address-based sampling methods and were later interviewed online, by telephone or in person.
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