Self-driving cars, robots that care for the sick, drones that deliver parcels - technological progress is currently coming up with spectacular new machines. They will make our lives easier, and they will take over an ever-increasing proportion of the work that people used to do for a living. The much-cited study by Oxford academics Carl Frey and Michael Osborne predicts that 47 per cent of jobs will fall victim to digitalisation in twenty years' time. The most astonishing thing about the list of 702 jobs: Office jobs dominate the top thirty ranks: buyers, telemarketers, insurance clerks.

In factories, robots have come a long way and are becoming ever more precise and skilful. In the healthcare sector, they tend to be prototypes that help heavy patients, for example. "In many places, robots will work in tandem with humans," says Oliver Bendel. The professor regularly looks at the latest robots and develops autonomous, digitally controlled machines together with his students.

According to the German expert, transport and delivery robots are already in use as test devices as well as security and surveillance robots in shopping centres and on company premises. Autonomous machines are the face of the fourth industrial revolution, as the latest phase of digitalisation is known.

In the office, it is not robots but autonomous computer programmes that write annual reports, do payroll accounting, take orders and much more. We have long since become accustomed to personalised advertising on the Internet. Software observes our behaviour and draws an increasingly precise profile of our needs and preferences. In a similar way, programmes learn to perform tasks such as those mentioned above. Human feedback helps them to understand more and more and to make fewer and fewer mistakes.

Will machines soon take over? What remains for us humans? In the past, more new jobs were created than old ones were lost when technological progress accelerated. The transition from an agricultural to an industrial and finally to a service society has multiplied income and prosperity in the countries of the North.

Whether digitalisation also creates more jobs than it destroys is debatable. In any case, the enormous increase in computer performance, which continues to grow, has not yet led to fewer jobs. Former SP National Councillor and economist Rudolf Strahm believes that the fear of digitalisation is unfounded. He diagnoses a "robot syndrome among American professors and book writers addicted to profiling". Strahm is convinced that the digital revolution will need masses of skilled labour to move forward.

One of the authors mentioned by Strahm is Martin Ford. He is an IT entrepreneur and wrote the award-winning book "The Rise of the Robots", in which he predicts mass unemployment. In an interview with the "Neue Zürcher Zeitung", he recognises that new areas of business continue to emerge. However, these are not very labour-intensive. One example of this is Google, which in 2015 generated a turnover comparable to that of the industrial group Siemens (74.98 billion dollars at Google, 75.69 billion euros at Siemens), but with less than a fifth of the workforce (around 61,000 employees at Google, 348,000 employees at Siemens).

As robots become increasingly important, people who can design, build and programme robots will be in demand, i.e. designers, automation specialists, computer scientists and engineers. But software is also making rapid progress in design and development. Where personal contact is required, machines cannot replace people, is a common perception. But just as we tell our smartphone verbally what we want it to do for us, this is already happening at individual hotel receptions and in certain shopping centres, where robots provide customers with information. He met the robot Pepper in San Francisco, which will soon also be used in the Glatt Centre near Zurich, says Oliver Bendel.

Both Bendel and Ford recommend that young people should not specialise too much, but rather acquire a wide range of knowledge and remain flexible. The university professor sees the greatest potential in a broad-based degree programme. Even in the future, the majority of Swiss people cannot be expected to have a university degree. However, there are now further training opportunities in every sector that give specialists a technical edge and also impart cross-professional knowledge. This makes it easier to change sectors.

For Rudolf Strahm, this is the key, as he wrote in the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper: "The appropriate response to the digital revolution is continuing professional development, which means learning new things, learning and learning again. In this way, the fourth industrial revolution is not forcing people out of work, but giving them new roles and functions at work."

Will digitalisation and robotisation also create other new jobs, such as the web designer in the 1990s or, more recently, the social media manager? Oliver Bendel speculates that a new job could consist of bringing robots to their place of work and driving self-driving lorries to the motorway because the traffic in residential areas is still too complex for autonomous navigation. Collaborative robots in production would also have to be trained by humans first.

The internet has already given rise to other new jobs: the modern, flexible workforce can rent out a room on Airbnb, provide Uber driving services or lend out their own car via Sharoo. They can also carry out small computer jobs for Amazon Mechanical Turk. However, this is hardly enough to support a family.

A study by consulting firm Deloitte predicts thaton-demand work will increase in Switzerland. "People will work when they want and as much as they want," the study states positively. "On the other hand, they are no longer covered by current employee protection" (e.g. protection against dismissal or employer social security contributions), the Deloitte experts concede. More freedom here also means less security.

In contrast to Rudolf Strahm, Oliver Bendel and Martin Ford expect that there will be less work for people in the future and that they will have more time at their disposal. However, robots and software will not only take work away from them, but will also cost them income. This is why Bendel and Ford are in favour of a basic income, as was recently rejected at the ballot box in Switzerland.

Everything is still a forecast and some of it is speculation. But it is becoming apparent that technological progress is not only changing work itself, but also the way we live. There is a lot to learn, and not just for career starters.

How threatened is a profession by robotics and artificial intelligence? The higher the percentage, the more at risk the profession is.

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The text comes from our Career Choice Special, which is enclosed with the May 2017 issue. In it, you will also find numerous portraits of young people presenting their work and tips on choosing a career. Order your copy of our May issue now.