/biz/ - Business & Finance

We automated away 4 million manufacturing jobs in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa; all the swing states he needed to win and did win. What was done to the manufacturing jobs will now be done to the call center jobs, retail jobs, fast food jobs, which comprise 30% of all jobs in the US, as well as clerical and administrative work.

But this economic upheaval is just getting started. Numerous warnings by the likes of MIT, McKinsey & Company, and Bain & Company say that by 2030—just a decade from now—anywhere from 20% to 40% of American jobs will be automated. You’ve no doubt heard of cars and trucks that drive themselves, but what about machines that can read X-rays and powerful new algorithms that respond to customer-service inquiries faster and more efficiently than humans?

A Silicon Valley startup has completed what appears to be the first commercial freight cross-country trip by an autonomous truck, which finished a 2,800-mile-run from Tulare, California to Quakertown, Pennsylvania for Land O'Lakes in under three days. The trip was smooth like butter, 40,000 pounds of it.