Why innovation is different this time

Since the nineteenth century and still today, humankind has feared that automation will create massive unemployment. So far, this has never materialized. Since the Industrial Revolution, for every job lost to a machine at least one new job was created. From this perspective, it doesn’t seem very worrying that it will be different this time. Yet, I think we will see some significant differences this time.
Humans can be identified as having two main abilities, a physical one and a cognitive one. Until now, innovation has mainly competed with the physical ability a human possesses. For example, innovations in industrial and agricultural sectors often involved the replacement of humans by a machine and then required the machine to be controlled by a human. In other words, new service jobs emerged through innovation and hence required cognitive skills humans possess, such as communication, analyzing, and learning. This has happened in a variety of settings.
Innovation today is different. Artificial intelligence (AI) is starting to outperform humans on both physical and cognitive abilities. Take for example the taxi-industry: taxi-drivers used to drive around looking for people whom they can bring to their destination in exchange for cash. Innovation made it possible for people to order a taxi by calling to a taxi-service and meet a driver at a predefined location. This worked perfectly fine. Today, we can all download an app called ‘Uber’ or ‘Lyft’ on our mobile phone which enables us to order a ride with a click of a button. Once we arrive at our destination, payment has happened automatically. This works even more convenient and takes away almost all friction. Although this makes the drivers work for an algorithm rather than a taxi company, it is still mainly an innovation that both creates and destroys jobs, because we’ll always need a driver, right?
In 2017, Statista reported that the USA has about 200k taxi drivers and CNN (2017) says the USA has about 750k Uber drivers. In the “access-economy” we live in today, Uber believes that transportation will become increasingly shared, and eventually driverless to increase safety (Uber, 2019). With systems and machines, such as cars, getting smarter and smarter through AI and machine learning, people start to lose on both physical and cognitive front. Referring to the taxi-industry example: up to almost a million jobs could be lost, but how many new jobs will be created?
AI and machine learning are likely to cause a huge net loss of jobs in the long-run. The thing a lot of people tend to forget when they talk about this is to ask why. It is so ingrained in our culture that we must have jobs, that we forget to ask why. We don’t actually want the jobs, but we want the self-fulfillment, the social interaction, the achievements, or the income it brings us. So, don’t forget why you’re doing what you do.
The transition will be slow. Drivers aren’t going to show up for work one morning only to be told that they have been replaced by autonomous cars. A slow transition means that opportunities are there along the way. You’re not stuck in what you’re currently doing. Just think about why you do what you do and whether it’s still relevant a decade from now. Don’t fight the wave but learn how to surf.