New technologies are
going to destroy jobs, and there’s no promise they will create enough new ones
to fill the gap
Do you think a computer could do your job? It’s a question that
people have been asking for at least 25 years, and it’s becoming more intense
with the advance of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI). And the
uncomfortable truth is that the answer for a growing number is ‘yes’.
Technology has been knocking people out of work for a couple
of centuries, and as it develops ever more quickly the trend is going to
continue. So far it’s been alleviated in industrial economies by the creation
of new jobs, but the big question is whether this can continue as robotics and
AI automates more tasks previously dependent on the human brain.
A new report from Pew Research, AI, Robotics
and the Future of Jobs,
indicates that there isn’t a consensus. A survey of almost 1,900 experts
produced close to an even split between the optimists and pessimists, with 52%
expecting that technology will create as many jobs as it displaces by 2025 and
48% forecasting that it won’t do so. Unsurprisingly, a lot of the latter group
are worried about big increases in income inequality, mass unemployment and
breakdowns in social order.
It’s hard to feel positive about blue collar jobs, and the
more routine white collar occupations. Robotics are extending machines’
capacity for manual tasks, and AI promises (or threatens, depending on where
you stand) to do the same for a lot of jobs that involve the routine processing
of information. Also, the ability of cognitive systems to process vast
quantities of data at high speed is impinging on areas, such as healthcare diagnoses
and financial trading, currently regarded as the province of professionals (a
subject I covered in a white
paper for the UK’s Chartered Institute for IT).
I’m not going to predict whether the new technology will
create enough jobs to replace those it knocks out. I lean towards the
pessimists’ view, but that’s the result of a mild scepticism rather than any
strong evidence. But the Pew Research report has prompted a couple of thoughts
about the future of technology and job creation.
One is that developed economies rely increasingly on jobs
that could be described as non-essential. You can apply it to big chunks of the
media, marketing, retail, manufacturing consumer goods that are seldom used –
providing services that the recipients like, but could easily do without. I
suspect that these jobs are close to their limit; society can’t consume any
more, however inventive the ad men become at creating demand. There will be
fewer new ones to fill the gap as more of the essential jobs become the
province of robotics and AI.
The other is to do with how far AI will be allowed to
penetrate the professions or top end management roles. There is a realistic
argument that an educated human judgement is necessary for many decisions,
especially when there’s an ethical element involved. Cognitive computing can be
used for high level decision support, but the ultimate responsibility should
remain with a human. Those humans form elites, and elites tend to be very good
at protecting their own interests.
They’ll want rigid boundaries in place to keep themselves in
those top level roles, and a culture that emphasises the primacy of the human mind
in their fields. They may be right, they may be wrong, but there are going to be
a lot of roles for which the limits are not clear, and professions that will
become battlefields.
Of course there’s another possibility: that as technology
takes over more jobs those that remain are spread more evenly, so we’ve all got
more leisure time. But that was predicted fifty years ago, it hasn’t worked out
that way since and, given the prevailing dynamics, it’s not likely to happen in
the foreseeable future.
The advance of robotics and AI is inevitable, and in the
long term it could well do more good than harm; but in the next two, three,
four decades the disruption they cause won’t be a pretty thing to watch.
Mark
Say is a UK based writer who covers the role of information management and
technology in business. See www.marksay.co.uk
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