  The uniqueness of human labour is at question in times of smart technologies.
The 250 years-old discussion on technological unemployment reawakens.
Prominently, Frey and Osborne (2017) estimated that half of US employment will
be automated by algorithms within the next 20 years. Other follow-up studies
conclude that only a small fraction of workers will be replaced by digital
technologies. The main contribution of our work is to show that the diversity
of previous findings regarding the degree of job automation is, to a large
extent, driven by model selection and not by controlling for personal
characteristics or tasks. For our case study, we consult experts in machine
learning and industry professionals on the susceptibility to digital
technologies in the Austrian labour market. Our results indicate that, while
clerical computer-based routine jobs are likely to change in the next decade,
professional activities, such as the processing of complex information, are
less prone to digital change.
