World Economic Forum (WEF) said in its report, entitled "The Future of Jobs," that significant technological advances have reshaped society as we know and it push us into "the fourth industrial revolution", transforming the labour markets beyond all recognition from decades ago. But in the same time, it will lead to a net loss of over 5 million jobs in 15 major developed and emerging economies by 2020, including Australia, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, the UK, and the US. http://uk.businessinsider.com/wef-davos-report-on-robots-replacing-human-jobs-2016-1?
Today I read an article in a German news portal, which predicts the loss of ~7 million jobs in Germany, due to advanced robotics, including AI. They also predict 2 million new jobs to create and maintain these robots and AI solutions, but there stays a net loss of 5 million jobs till 2019 http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/47/47152/2.html I'm watching this development with some unease for a while. Unease, because the lost jobs are 'simple' jobs. Now, one can argue, that everone is free to get a better education, and get a higher qualified job. The problem is though, that intelligence is not even distributed, it roughly follows a gauss curve. That means, there is a number of persons, who are just too stupid to reach a higher qualification. And they are the losers in this process - not enough that got the bad end of this distribution, they also are the ones whose jobs are erased by atomatization. And they don't have a lobby, like the rich, or the intellectuals. I'm a bit worried about stability in the society, if those who already are a bit handicapped by nature, now also get handicapped by technology, which steals their jobs. In addition, this development slowly creeps up the "career ladder". First the robots replaced factory workers in repetitive jobs. Then, they replaced workers in not-so-repetitive jobs. IT solutions begun to replace people in administrative jobs as well. Lately robots/AI also do repetitive tasks in research (create hypotheses, e.g. about chemical compounds, create these compounds and measure them, to check if the hypthesis was correct and tell a human scientist about successes for furher research). There is no end to this in sight. A few years ago, it was claimed that robots can't be creative. Well, maybe. But there are chatbots, there are systems which create artificial music (maybe not great, but definitely not bad music), and also to create visual art. These systems might not be creative the human way, what they do is to apply predefined and then randomized patterns, but even there it shows that the lower ends of creative works is taken over by machines. At times I feel a bit guilty for working in the IT business, knowing that many of our "solutions" are job killers in other places. I have the better end (still) but don't like the effects that so many people are losing their jobs because of advancements in our domain.
I understand your unease, but I think I remain cautiously optimistic that societies can manage this, just as we managed the mechanisation of agriculture and then of industry. There are always new jobs that people of modest talents can do - and f more of them are available then I think more such jobs will appear eventually. Though I do concede that politics may need to come into it, to manage any further tendency for too big a gap to appear between high earners and low earners, in the interests of social cohesion. (This is in fact something that needs attention already, at least in N America and the UK.)
The paper calls it the 4th Industrial Revolution, which includes developments in artificial intelligence and machine-learning, robotics, nanotech, 3D printing, genetics and biotech. It will cause widespread disruption to labour markets over the next 5 years, with enormous changes in the skill sets needed to thrive. The Future of Jobs summary about skills and jobs requirements: http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_FOJ_Executive_Summary_Jobs.pdf As well as for The Gender Gap: http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_FOJ_Executive_Summary_GenderGap.pdf
1st industrial revolution: mechanical power, as in steam engines aand water power becomes used widespread. 2nd industrial revolution: conveyor belts increase productivity, work is split into many small steps 3rd industrial revolution: automatization, robots, very complex and/or versatile machinery 4th industrial revolution: information technology, big data, process optimization using the data. Not neccessarily AI, but AI comes very handy there. The core is the increasing use of information technology, as in opposed to the increased use of advanced mechanics, like robots, which were the 3rd revolution. - Not only "simple worklers" will be replaced, but an increasing number of administrative positions, too. - Most likely also some positions in research and development, where "AI" based systems begin to replace jobs as well. I put AI in quotes here, because those systems are not very versatile, so not intellugent in a way we think of intellugence, but very capable in a limited domain. "Expert systems" were one of the fist incarnations, and they see quite widespread use as advisiors, also as reviewers for decisions. - Bodily work will become less, brain work will become more. This should benefit women, but this was also the case in the 3rd revolution, and the linked articles still show a surprising big inequality. It also should help bodily handicapped people to find jobs, if they are intelligent. - Downside: People who have intelligence deficiencies will drop out - there will be less and less jobs that don't require brainwork. Sometimes I think there should be a "machine tax". If a robot or AI generates income, part of it should go into a "social restructuring fund", which is used to help the people who can't find work anymore, because machines, robots and AI systems have taken over so many jobs. I know this is a highly controversial topic, likely even more in the USA than in Europe, where such "equalization systems" are more common, and also liked by big parts of population. Maybe there are better ideas, so I don't want to say it's the only or the best solution. But some sort of solution must be found to prevent riots if too many people are not only without a job, but without a reasonable chance to get a job. Spain has unemployment levels of 50% in some areas, I can'timagine people will accept that for a long time. Many of those people are neither particularly dumb or lazy, just, there are so few jobs available that many people can't find one. I wish that the intellectuals and politicians of all nations begin to look into this, and come up with an idea for futures societies, where machines, robots and AI do most of the work, and there just aren't enough jobs for everyone - societies which still look fair to the people, and give everyone a, let's say, "good" life. Without jobs for everyone, this will require some radical changes, I'm afraid too radical for many to even think of such things like the above mentioned "machine tax". I can hear many already scream "communist" and "socialism", but I'm afraid such society models can't be based on capitalism purely. They will need other concepts, which remind of communism. I don't like the terms "disruptive technology" or "disruptive business model", but I'm afraid we face a development which will be disruptive to the social concepts that we are using these days. I just hope there will be peaceful evolution path from current societies to the new societies, and not a revolution with a civil war.
