Your personality predicts a great deal about your prospects in life, including whether or not a computer will end up doing your job. Answer the following to find out how likely this may be:
When you were a teenager, compared with other people at your school, were you more or less
(1) mature
(2) extroverted
(3) intelligent
and interested in
(4) the arts
(5) science
(6) leadership
(7) sports
(8) working with tools and the outdoors
(9) people
(10) business
For items 1-7, score 1 point for every “more”, and 0 for every “less”. For items 8-10, score 1 point for every “less” and 0 points for every “more”. Add up your points to find out – on a scale of 0-10 – how likely you are, on average, to have ended up in a job that will be taken by a computer.
A new study conducted at the University of Illinois found that all of these things were uniquely associated with the likelihood of ending up in a job that is earmarked for likely computerisation. These correlations held even after controlling for social and economic status. While many are fairly unsurprising, the last three run in the opposite direction to what we might have expected. Presumably the experts believe tools and outdoor equipment will be replaced with robots, while dealing with customers and making business decisions is best left to AI.
A fully referenced version of this article can be found at benambridge.com. Order Are You Smarter Than a Chimpanzee? (Profile Books, £12.99) for £11.04 at bookshop.theguardian.com
