A Toronto consulting firm has acknowledged its dire 2017 warning that automation threatened 42% of Canadian jobs failed to materialize, with employment instead increasing by nearly three million.The Centre for Innovating the Future made the admission in a written submission to the Senate social affairs committee examining automation forecasts.“Our own 2017 evidence is now nine years old and can be checked,” the Centre wrote. “We begin with what we got wrong. The forecast we brought to this committee did not hold.”The firm said the prediction, based on a widely cited 2016 study, was now old enough to be measured against what actually happened.“The 2017 round of those forecasts is old enough to grade,” said the submission, What The Record Says About Automation Forecasting. “It failed. That is a finding the committee can use.”The Centre said Canada's workforce grew from 18.3 million to 21.2 million over the period, representing an increase of approximately 2.93 million jobs.“The figure came from a 2016 study that was widely cited at the time,” the Centre wrote of its earlier prediction. “We used it to argue urgency. It was wrong.”Blacklock's Reporter said centre co-founder Abishur Prakash warned senators in 2017 that artificial intelligence, automation and other forms of computerization could eliminate millions of Canadian jobs.“Studies are showing that 42% of Canadians jobs are at risk of being automated or 7.5 million jobs,” Prakash testified.He cited international estimates suggesting 85% of jobs were at risk in Ethiopia, 49% in the United States, 50% in the United Kingdom and roughly 49% in Germany.Prakash also pointed to an insurance company in Japan that had laid off 34 employees and replaced them with IBM Watson.“I’m not talking 15 or 20 years,” he said..Prakash acknowledged at the hearing that forecasts could be substantially wrong but argued the potential consequences remained significant.“These studies are talking about 15 or 20 years from now, and let’s say they’re wrong by 50%,” he said. “That’s a big drop from any study, but that’s still 3 to 4 million jobs will disappear.”“If even a fraction of these projections come true, it’s still a huge number,” said Prakash, who described himself as a futurist.“Personally I don’t make predictions,” he added.Then-senator Judith Seidman of Quebec asked Prakash what being a futurist meant.“That’s a very good question,” he replied. “You’re really putting me on the spot here.”Prakash said his job was to help businesses prepare for future technological and economic changes.“I mainly work in the private sector,” he said. “I help large companies, Fortune 500 companies to start-ups, become future ready.”Nine years later, the Centre is now arguing Canada's problem may be too little automation rather than too much.“Canada’s problem is not too many robots, but too few,” it wrote.The Centre cited International Federation of Robotics figures showing Canada had 241 industrial robots for every 10,000 manufacturing employees in 2024.That compared with 1,220 in South Korea, 818 in Singapore, 449 in Germany, 446 in Japan and 307 in the United States. The worldwide average was 132.The Centre said the failure of its earlier forecast provides a cautionary example for policymakers considering predictions about the future impact of artificial intelligence and automation.
