Automation, A Human Advantage, and The Future Of Work
ABB's robot conducts a symphony orchestra
The following pieces of texts were picked up from "BBC Future Now".
With soft, nimble fingers, an arm stretches out to delicately pluck an apple from a shelf and place it gently into a basket. This is a prototype robotic arm being tested by Ocado, the British online supermarket. The irregular shape and delicate flesh of these common groceries have meant they tend to be packed by human workers at Ocado’s warehouses. But the company is pursuing robotic technology that could assist these human warehouse workers but still handle produce safely, making the process faster and cheaper for the company.
Ocado is far from the only company pursuing automated workers. It is happening in hospitals, law firms, the stock market. The list goes on.
Reports suggest that 47% of people employed in the US are at risk of being replaced by machines and 35% of jobs in the UK may similarly be threatened – with even higher threats in developing countries, with two thirds of jobs at risk of being automated.
But machines stealing jobs is not new. “Automation has happened before,” says Bhagwan Chowdhry, professor of finance at the University of California, Los Angeles. Chowdhry points to the shifts that took place in factories during the industrial revolution when automatic looms and other machines took over from human weavers.
So what’s different this time? “It it is not going to affect just blue collar workers,” says Chowdry. “But also a lot of white collar workers.”
Often, we think of low-wage, low-skill jobs being the most at risk, like warehouse workers or cashiers, but automation may also affect middle-income jobs, such as clerks, chefs, office workers, security guards, junior lawyers, inspectors.
“Most jobs that we will see being automated require different skill sets from those being created. The key challenge will be to make sure that those who experience displacement will find something meaningful to do.”
So, should companies seeking to automate jobs have a moral responsibility to help the staff they are replacing to learn new skills? The answer may go beyond just the companies – it may need to start in school. The way we currently structure education may no longer be fit for purpose in a world where technology is changing so rapidly.
"... technological advances will automate tasks more quickly than the United States can create jobs ..."
“The concern is that we are not updating our education, training and political institutions to keep up,” warns Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Initiative on the Digital Economy.
Brynjolfsson and Paul Clarke, chief technology officer at Ocado, both agree that school and college education need to better prepare pupils for a world where robotic and artificial intelligence will be widespread.
The concern is that we are not updating our education, training and political institutions to keep up.
In the workplace, employees will also continually require new sets of skills rather than using the same ones over their entire career that could just go obsolete anyway.
“The distinction between work and learning might need to become more amorphous,” says Chowdhry. “We currently have a dichotomy where those who work need not learn, and those who learn do not work. We need to think about getting away from the traditional five day working week to one where I spend 60% of my time doing my job and 40% learning on a regular basis.”
"... Robots will complement you, not replace you ..."
“We can have cases where machines pick up some of the repetitive work to free up humans to do other more rewarding aspects of their job,” explains James Manyika, senior partner at McKinsey who has led much of their research into the impacts of automation. “This could put a massive downward pressure on wages because the machine is now doing all the hard work. It could also mean more people could do that job aided by the technology, so there is more competition.”
“As we automate a lot of the repetitive work, we are going to see increased demand for creative skills,” says Brynjolfsson. “We are also going to see an increased demand for those with social skills, interpersonal skills, who are nurturing, caring, teaching, persuasive, have negotiating skills, and are good at selling.”
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