15 Apr
30 Mar
The level of interest and concern about Automation and Artificial Intelligence is growing every year.
If we do a search in Google on AI year on year for the last 10 years we have seen it grow from 376 million hits in 2007 to 845 million hits in 2016. In the first quarter of 2017 we are already up to over 500 million hits.
In addition, we are seeing eminent people like Steven Hawking, Elon Musk and Bill Gates expressing concern on the dangers of AI.
There is a profusion of articles on the growth and impact of automation on work and jobs.
Fear and concern over job loses outnumber those articles on new jobs and job growth by 10 to 1.
This is understandable because we can certainly see the immediate impact of job loss but find it more difficult to imagine new jobs and what they could be.
History is full of examples where efficiencies due to technology have made old jobs redundant. The biggest change was the transition from the agrarian revolution to the industrial revolution. People largely moved from the fields and farming to industries in major towns.
At that time, there were many who protested over job losses especially in cottage industries, like weaving, that very quickly became industrialised in large mills powered by the steam engine.
The question is, will the same happen as we move to the robotic automation age or will this be different?
What I do know is that it is very difficult to predict the future in detail and the best we can do is to project what has happened in the past in broad terms.
We know from history that technology progresses inexorably and, in the long run, society deals with it. We know that on balance new jobs are created in areas that we could not have imagined at the time. On this basis, I am inclined to believe the people who provide a plausible and balanced view of the future based on past trends. They offer a longer term optimistic view of the world while acknowledging the potential short term transition problems.
The more negative views offer us what I would like to call a risk management view of the future. They are not against adopting new technologies but rather advocate being prepared by understanding the potential impact.
An article that reflects this more balanced view of the automated robotic future is an essay by David H Autor “Why are there still so many Jobs – The History and Future of Work Place Automation”
Autor has also given a Ted Talk and you can get a quick overview by clicking here.
The key features include that there will be change and automation increases both productivity and decreases effort to get things done. The world generally gets it wrong in predicting lack of work as can be seen since the turn of the 20th century and the studies US government reports on the impact of automation.
More importantly he describes the two driving forces for continued work:
1 - The O-ring effect: In any chain of events the weakest link will be improved and made more reliable and predictable. Technology will allow people to increasingly improve their skills and become more reliable. People are required to ensure we continue this path of increased performance.
2 - “Never Get Enough” mentality: People will seek out new ways to spend their time and money on new things creating new jobs in new areas. We have an insatiable thirst to consume services and goods based on our unique passions and desires. As technology makes things cheaper we have more to spend on other things. Autor presents compelling information on how much less of our time and money is spent on the necessities of life compared to our grandparents, and how much of our money and time is spent on things that did not exist in the past.
Overall, what seems to be clear is that menial routine standard tasks will be automated. Complex tasks requiring considerable background knowledge and evaluation will be augmented by technology and tasks requiring problem solving, intuition, creativity and persuasion will remain the sanctuary of people.
Now for some fun, look at the following predictions and just imagine how you may fit in any of these potential jobs.
Thomas Frey – the Futurist Speaker seeks to predict the new potential jobs in his article “162 Future Jobs – preparing for the Jobs that don’t yet exist”
Another interesting article describes a range of jobs that in some way are extensions of work currently being done but with a new twist, “10 well paid jobs of the future”
Whatever we can imagine may indeed come to pass but I believe that the most likely areas where humans will find work will be in jobs that are inefficient, have great uncertainty, require flexibility and mental agility, need creativity and cannot be proceduralised.