OREANDA-NEWS. November 01, 2016. In the next decade, the mining industry may lose more than half of its jobs to automation, according to a new report. That’s not based on future technologies, but on automated equipment being deployed today, computerworld.com notes.

This industry is adopting self-driving trucks, automated loaders and automated drilling and tunnel-boring systems. It is also testing fully autonomous long-distance trains, which carry materials from the mine to a port, according to the report by the International Institute for Sustainable Development in Winnipeg, Canada.

A broader question is whether mining is a bellwether for other industries. There’s no clear answer, but what Aaron Cosbey, a development economist with the institute and a report author, can say is this: “Where you can find robotic replacements for human labor you tend to do it.”