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Will robots take your job?

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The future could be very different. It's one reason I started this blog. What will technology mean for jobs? For incomes? For society?

So I was excited to find Will Robots Take Your Job? at my local library.


What does the book say?

There's always been technological change and we've always found jobs. As the more laborious jobs were taken by machines, we took on higher skilled jobs, moving further up the "skill ladder".

The main question is whether this time is different. Will the "skill ladder" continue to have higher rungs for humans to move on to? Will these rungs appear as quickly as the current rungs disappear?

Either way we're headed for significant disruption. Either large-scale re-training of our workforce or massive unemployment. The author despairs that our leaders seem not to talk about this - and worse still, not have a plan for it.

Farmers or horses?

In 1870 about 75% of Americans worked in agriculture and used 25 million horses to do so. Farming technology developed. Now just 1% of Americans are farmers and the horses are gone.

Using this analogy for the current age, will we be the farmers (and find other work) or the horses (and be no longer required).

So what will happen?

The book examines some areas where technology is poised to take over - including transport, legal, financial and education sectors. Unlike the 'rust-belt' collapse in places like Detroit, this disruption will be spread across industries and geography.

The change may also be quick. Think of how far we've come in recent decades. In the 90s we didn't have internet. In the 2000s, in-car navigation was a thick book of maps. In 2010 we still had video rental stores. Change in technology happens quicker and quicker. So it makes sense that the next 20 years will bring even more change.

Various reports estimate the percentage of jobs affected to be at least 9% and up to 47%. For comparison, unemployment in the Great Depression was 25%.

What will we do?

"New human experience and capabilities emerge" that are previously unimaginable. Who would have imagined decades ago that we'd now have people who work in SEO, ebay sellers, Airbnb hosts, or professional bloggers? It's hard to imagine the future whether it be the future jobs that will exist or a "social order in which many more people don't work for a living".

The culture shock of the future can be compared to visiting a foreign country - except there's no return flight. We should get ready to live there - and to embrace the differences and advantages that it holds.

It might not be so bad

There are two ways the author sees the disruption being less than expected.
1. As consumers we might pay more for human interaction.
2. There might be many and varied new jobs and enough education and re-training.
Even then, there's still disruption, it's just a question of how big and how long.

What should we do

The main theme of this book is to be prepared. In a world where there are fewer working hours to go around the author suggests these ways to be prepared:
  • Prepare people by talking about this more (especially by leaders)
  • Create policies to share work around more evenly.
  • Perhaps introduce a robot tax to replace lost income tax.
  • Look at Universal Basic income to take care of people when jobs are scarce. (The author notes that UBI is not the only way to do this but looks more attractive as scenarios get more dramatic.)
  • Prepare our workforce, noting that the important skills of the future will be the essentially human qualities such as relational abilities, intuition, creativity and emotional intelligence.

What are humans for?

Let's sum up with two quotes from the book. First, that people continually "note the overwhelming complexity of certain tasks that humans do, and conclude that computers won't be able to master them, yet it's only a matter of time before they do". Early examples include playing chess. More recently driving a car.

The second quote is suggested to be the central question of 2025:
What are people for in a world that does not need their labor, and where only a minority are needed to guide the 'bot-based economy?
That's a fascinating question to ponder. When life is not about work, what is our purpose as human beings?

PS. If you're interested in this topic, check out my related post Humans Need Not Apply or the article You will lose your job.

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