In California, a Stanford student creates a robot that answers legal questions, and in China, a TV channel starts featuring a robot that delivers the daily weather forecast live on camera. What seem like fun experiments at first will most likely have a profound impact on what our workforce of the future will look like. The World Economic Forum (WEF) predicts that automation based on artificial intelligence and robotics will kill more than 5 million jobs over the next 4 years – and this is just the beginning.
“Today, we are on the cusp of a Fourth Industrial Revolution. Developments in genetics, artificial intelligence, robotics, nanotechnology, 3D printing and biotechnology, to name just a few, are all building on and amplifying one another,” the WEF suggests in its report on current technological advancements. It further states:
“This will lay the foundation for a revolution more comprehensive and all-encompassing than anything we have ever seen.”
In fact, 20 years from now, 47% of today’s jobs are at risk of becoming automated, as predicted by an Oxford study from 2013. This is nearly half of all jobs!
This is not the first time, however, that we have seen such a disruption in the workforce. Before the agricultural revolution, more than 40% of the population in Britain was involved in making food. Now this number is under 2%. As wealth increased and less people were needed for food production, new jobs opened up in industrial production and later in the service industry. So do we need to worry at all? Maybe. There is a new variable factoring into the equation: Moore’s Law. Moore’s Law refers to the observation that overall computing power doubles every two years facilitating progress at breathtaking scale.
The price of progress: Civil unrest?
The speed of current technological innovation is unprecedented. Comparing the imminent revolution to previous ones helps to understand why it is difficult to anticipate how the coming wave of automation will play out in the workforce and in society. The first industrial revolution was triggered by the invention of water- and steam-powered manufacturing and took an entire century to unfold. The second industrial revolution continued for 70 years until electrical assembly lines and the division of labor were widely adopted by businesses. The last big technological leap was a new degree of automation achieved through programmable computers, which was adopted by the workforce over the course of roughly 40 years.
As the pace of innovation and automation increases, so does pressure of adoption and most likely friction in society and among workers. It took Britain more than two centuries to shift from an agricultural to a modern industrial society. While overall wealth increased, workers who didn’t adapt their skill set to the new requirements drifted into poverty. Now imagine what might happen if massive automation occurs within one generation!
In this revolution, middle income workers will lose the most
The impending wave of automation has another interesting characteristic: it can automate more complex tasks. Over the last 20 years, automation has replaced mostly manual, blue-collar jobs. Now, with A.I. factoring into robotics, more white-collar jobs that require basic cognitive skills will become obsolete. Laura Tyson is concerned that upcoming technological automation will mostly erase middle-income jobs and increase demand for high-skilled workers knowledgeable about new technologies, such as data scientists, developers and engineers. As a consequence, many middle class workers will be pushed down to lower-income jobs.
Progress is worth it
There are growing pains associated with a technological revolution, but there are also benefits. Eric Schmidt, chairman of Alphabet (Google) told the Telegraph in an interview, “I understand the economic arguments, but this technology benefits everyone on the planet, from the rich to the poor, the educated to the uneducated, high IQ to low IQ, every conceivable human being. It genuinely makes us all smarter, so this is a natural next step.” Schmidt refers to the fact that throughout history it was technological progress that caused economic productivity to grow, overall wealth to increase and general public health to improve. Progress is the one factor that steadily increases our standard of living as a society and prolongs our life expectation as individuals.
Automation could make us free and creative
Regardless of the anticipated benefits, some may find themselves in need of hedging against job uncertainty. Dave Coplin, futurologist at Microsoft in UK, advises to hone skills machines are unable to perform. The truth is that A.I. does automate many processes but it rarely automates entire jobs. A McKinsey study shows that 60% of jobs will have some component automated but only 5% of the jobs are predicted to be completely automated. This points to what new jobs facilitated by artificial intelligence could look like: a collaboration of humans and smart robots working in harmony to achieve greater results. In this setting, machines would likely fulfil the boring, repetitive part of the work, while humans would mostly input creativity and strategic, high-level guidance. This setup could help to break the old 9-5 paradigm and foster greater flexibility for workers. That doesn’t sound so bad after all.
The new automation age seems to be an inadvertent wave speeding towards us. Its implications and effects are as contested as they seem to be ground shaking. In the end, will the long term benefits outweigh the short term pains? Is your job threatened to be automated? Feel free to tell us what you think in the comment section below.
Dear Felicia,
I did like your report very much. In my opinion the technical progress is an automatism that cannot be stopped. It is a natural course of action that there are following advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand workplaces are a part of rationalization programmes on the other hand there is the development of new ones. An unsolved problem is that jobs with lower qualifications are reduced in a hard way. Therefore it is the primär task of society to enable education for a majority of people getting a better prognose. Last but not least a great benefit could be technology helps to reduce terrestrial over-exploitation What a big pluspoint!
I have read A LOT of articles on Artificial Intelligence. This one, by far, is the best one for its simplicity, coherence, and the knowledge that it provides. Thank you!
Hi Amir, thanks a lot, I appreciate your sentiments!