Almost a century ago, in 1930, the famous economist John Maynard Keynes made a prediction that technology would make us so productive that a major problem we will face will be “how to occupy the leisure which science and compound interest will have won for him, wisely and agreeably and well?” (Keynes, 1933).
Nowadays, with the rise of new technologies, machines, and artificial intelligences, many people are starting to thing that he was right and that AI-powered robots are going to steal their jobs. But is that really true? Will AI really make us all unemployed?
Of course it is certainly true that the always-improving technologies will render several human jobs redundant and unnecessary. For instance, the United Kingdoms have announced that, by the end of the year, they would release a “fleet of driverless lories” to be trialled on the UK’s motorways (Swinford and Krol, 2017). Autonomous car technology has already successfully being tested in other European countries, and we can expect it to render many jobs (e.g. truck and taxi drivers) irrelevant in the future. Similarly, robots and AI have a non-negligible impact on many other industries, especially in production processes.
However, even if automation will undoubtedly steal away many of our jobs, it is not really a problem. In fact, it has already happened before. As Kurzeil, director of engineering at Google Ray, said during his interview with Fortune, around 1900, most people worked in farms and factories, but most of these jobs don’t exist anymore nowadays (Lev-ram, 2017). Nevertheless, most people are still employed, because for each job eliminated, new ones were created. The same is likely to happen in our technological era; it is just too soon to see what the career landscape will look like in 5 or 10 years, which can be quite unsettling.
So does that mean that there is no need to worry about the future, and that everyone will still be able to easily find a job? I believe not. Indeed, as technology evolves and reshape or take over human tasks, the knowledge needed to perform these modified or completely new jobs change as well. The question is, will people have the necessary to perform these new tasks? Whereas us Bimmers are lucky enough to learn about subjects relevant for the future (e.g. Machine learning, Big data), I don’t believe that it is the case for all students, and even less for currently employed people.
I will finish by asking you what you think we could do to address this skill gap? What could we do to ensure that current employees have an easier transition from one occupation to another? Let me in the comments!
References:
- Keynes, J. M. (1933). Economic possibilities for our grandchildren (1930). Essays in persuasion, 358-73.
- Lev-Ram, M. (2017). Futurist Ray Kurzweil Isn’t Worried About Technology Stealing Your Job. [online] Fortune.com. Available at: http://fortune.com/2017/09/24/futurist-ray-kurzweil-job-automation-loss/ [Accessed 26 Sep. 2017].
- Swartz, J. (2017). Businesses say they just can’t find the right tech workers. [online] USA TODAY. Available at: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2017/03/28/tech-skills-gap-huge-graduates-survey-says/99587888/ [Accessed 26 Sep. 2017].
- Swinford, S. and Krol, C. (2017). Fleets of ‘driverless’ lorries will be trialled on Britain’s motorways from next year, Government announces. [online] The Telegraph. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/08/24/fleets-driverless-lorries-will-trialled-britains-motorways-next/ [Accessed 26 Sep. 2017].
Interesting topic Tran. In the industrial revolution a similar problem appeared in England, as the use of machines put a number of people out of work in the cloth industry. The government had the solution of making a machine tax, which meant that all companies using machines to produce cloth would be taxed, and the taxes would go toward the people out of work. The idea is great in theory, except that they ran into the problem of deciding what exactly would be considered a machine. A few years later the government got rid of the tax as they were spending more time arguing cases with businesses about what was and wasn’t a machine, that it cost more to keep the program going than it produced in tax revenue. I think this time around it will be difficult as well, but I think there should be some sort of government funding to retrain workers, possibly funded by the businesses benefiting from AI if possible.
Machine-tax reference
http://fortune.com/2017/02/25/bill-gates-robot-tax-automation-jobs/
Thank you for the article Tran and thank you for the on point comment, Shaffy. I agree with both of you in the sense that automation at large scale will completely change the dynamics of the labor market. Several researches predicted that, by 2030, 50% of the jobs on the labor market will be automated by robots (Weller, 2017). The only victims from this change will be the potentially laid-off people, who will struggle to find a job, because a machine is more efficient at doing it. Thus, there should be a way to offer an adequate standard living for those people who will potentially be laid off. However, I don’t agree for several reasons with the solution proposed by Bill Gates to tax companies’ usage of robots that replace human labor. Firstly, it is unclear where the taxed money will go, since they should be redirected to the laid-off people instead of the governments (Worstall, 2017). Secondly, this tax will slow innovation and growth of the companies in question (Smith, 2017). Thirdly, it is vague to distinguish between robots that complement human labor and robots that replace human labor, thus offering a possibility to the companies to evade this tax (Smith, 2017).
Therefore, I believe there are better ways than taxing robots to help reduce the harms of automation. Elon Musk has recently backed up the idea of universal basic income (Starkey, 2017). Universal basic income is a system in which all people receive a monthly income that can cover fundamental costs expenses such as, food, water, accommodation or clothes. Musk believes that with automation there will be created enough wealth to cover these expenses for all humans on Earth (Weller, 2017). Along Musk, there are several other Tech Gurus which support this idea, such as Richard Branson (Virgin Industries) or Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) (Chapman, 2017). Even if it may seem slightly too futuristic, this system has been tested already in Finland, where 2000 unemployed people received € 560 per month, besides their unemployment benefit. Participants reported lower level of stress, freedom to start businesses and an increase in motivation to find work (Chapman, 2017). Moreover, cities in the Netherlands will try this idea also in the fourth quarter of 2017. All in all, I think it’s a wonderful concept and I believe in a future where automation will remove unpleasant jobs from the human labour market and people will be free to pursue their actual dreams instead of an undesired job.
References:
Chapman, B. (2017) Richard Branson backs universal basic income joining Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk [online] The Independent. Available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/richard-branson-universal-basic-income-mark-zuckerberg-elon-musk-virgin-ceo-a7911866.html [Retrieved on October 10th 2017]
Smith, N. (2017) What’s wrong with Bill Gates’ robot tax [online] Bloomberg. Available at: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-28/what-s-wrong-with-bill-gates-robot-tax [Retrieved on October 10th 2017]
Starkey, D. (2017) Elon Musk: Automation Will Force Universal Basic Income [online] Geek.com. Available at: https://www.geek.com/tech-science-3/elon-musk-automation-will-force-universal-basic-income-1701217/ [Retrieved on October 10th 2017]
Weller, C. (2017) Elon Musk doubles down on universal basic income: ‘It’s going to be necessary’ [online] Business Insider. Available at: http://uk.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-universal-basic-income-2017-2?r=US&IR=T [Retrieved on October 10th 2017]
Worstall T. (2017) The Error In Bill Gates’ Latest Odd Idea – Let’s Tax The Robots Stealing Our Jobs [online] Forbes. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2017/02/18/the-error-in-bill-gates-latest-odd-idea-lets-tax-the-robots-stealing-our-jobs/#59606ede7289 [Retrieved on October 10th 2017]