Matthew Martin: Will you suffer automation?

Incessant rugby commentary is becoming a bit of a drone this week, but could robotic machines in the future become rugby players?

This week it's all about rugby and robots.

Rugby, because no matter where I go online it's there in the headlines, and with just about every person I speak to the first thing that passes their lips is a comment about the World Cup.

I suspect after six or so weeks of incessant rugby chatter I'll be totally bonkers.

So, I won't be getting up at ridiculous o'clock in the morning and aim not to watch a single minute of live World Cup rugby unless the All Blacks make the final.

It doesn't bother me at all. It's a fact of life during a World Cup-like contest of any sort.

But I don't see any point.

My Facebook feed is inundated with match scores and analysis posted by my rugby-mad mates and it's leading the headlines of every Southern Hemisphere-based, not to mention UK-based, news outlet. If the United States manage to win a game it will be on those websites as well.

I am fully informed, whether I like it or not.

And robots, because a recent study out of Oxford University in England has calculated just how likely it will be that a robot will take your job in the next 20 years.

How susceptible to automation each job was, was based on nine key skills required to perform it; social perceptiveness, negotiation, persuasion, assisting and caring for others, originality, fine arts, finger dexterity, manual dexterity and the need to work in a cramped work space.

Thankfully journalists are pretty safe. Our "likelihood of automation" is a "quite unlikely" 8 per cent.

However, for those working as telephone salespeople, typists or legal secretaries, you best be looking for a new career as your chances of being dumped in favour of a robotic replacement is "quite likely" at 99 per cent, 98.5 per cent and 97.6 per cent respectively.

Apparently robots are unable to pull a pint or run a hotel with people in the safest jobs - hotel and accommodation managers or owners, and publicans or managers of licensed premises - chances of being replaced by a mechanical manservant of some kind are a "quite unlikely" 0.4 per cent. So you won't be getting a Stephen Hawking-sounding robotic bar-keep giving you advice on what to buy the wife for her birthday, or explaining the intricacies of quantum physics.

Also safe are the social workers, nurses, artists and engineers - those who need to be creative or rely on feelings of empathy to do their jobs.

Interestingly, sports players are toward the bottom of the bell curve at a "not very likely" 28 per cent. Gladly, a room full of sweaty, pimple-faced teenagers directing replica Richie-robots is probably not going to be the future of sport.

I like technology, and in many aspects of modern life we take automation for granted. Someone hated washing dishes so they invented the dish-washing machine - for which I will be eternally grateful. A Star Trek fan liked the way communications devices had a flip-top screen, so he invented one.

Robots already help build everything from cars to jet planes to other robots. At this stage no robot or artificial intelligence has been able to completely replicate the amazingly intricate workings of the human body or mind, but realistically, it will probably happen in the not too distant future.

So, with that in mind, future generations may have to endure plenty of time off. In between helping to fix the robot that took their places in the first place. Or, robots could take over the Earth in a Terminator-esque revolution and wipe out civilisation. I'd much prefer a zombie apocalypse.