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Unless you have been living under a rock or working on a farm without an Internet connection, you probably have heard of the impending threat of automation taking your job. This has happened throughout history, and in point of fact, the only truism regarding the march of technology is it will probably put someone out of work.
Once we thought automation would only take the jobs of brute-force laborers and the white collar worker had nothing to worry about. Fast forward ten years and while many labor-intensive jobs such as factory workers have fallen to the capacity of robotic workers, there are plenty of other kinds of work which have also come under the auspices of what I have dubbed the “algorithmic economy.” Computer technology has gotten so sophisticated it is now being tasked to work on the stock market, organize workers and decide workflow.
The super-computer technology called Watson is being tested as part of a medical support program diagnosing disease and ailments in hospitals. One such algorithm has even begun writing articles like this one. The march of technology appears to be capable of attacking any number of kinds of work, depending upon the sophistication of the programming involved.
Given the advances of computer programming, the development of robotic systems and the merger of these two fields of technology, an entirely new class of worker has emerged. One that doesn’t need sick days. One that doesn’t take vacations. One that doesn’t arrive late or leave early. Most importantly to the corporate powers, these new workers don’t demand regular cost of living increases.
This makes them wildly popular with corporations who seek to reduce the one cost which never seems to go down over the decades, the cost of paying for Human labor. In a responsible society, we should desire people stop doing dangerous, repetitive and unfulfilling jobs. The capacity for robots to take over work in society that is dangerous, repetitive and unfulfilling should be the ultimate testament to a society well run, at least in theory.
However, we live in a consumer-driven society which requires workers to have jobs to pay bills. As automation disconnects workers from salaries, the pace of automation reducing the number of high paying jobs increases, leaving more people without meaningful work opportunities, and no means of acquiring new skills while they are between jobs.
A consumer-driven society keeps its members as wage-slaves who are forced to work for the least pay they can be legally given. Making matters worse, companies are, in an effort to remain competitive, reducing wages, which harms every worker who remains in the workforce because they have to work harder just to hold their economic ground.
In its current model, automation works as an economic wave of disenfranchisement sweeping through the least educated members of society, denying them the ability to find more intellectually satisfying work by keeping them looking for other less meaningful work to pay their bills rather than acquiring new opportunities.
Science fiction worlds posit the idea of robots taking the jobs and making society better, giving people more time to be creative, expressive and intellectually stimulated. But if our society remains driven by its consumer-level economic engine, automation will cause a catastrophic transformation to society as unemployment explodes and the algorithmic economy reduces opportunity to all but the highest educated members of society.
These highly educated workers work where automation cannot penetrate those fields of work… for now.
What is our path to restructuring society which would allowing automation to be a liberating force. A force freeing us from the harshest aspects of the Human condition: That you must live to work and work to live. We have sufficient technology available to us as a species that REQUIRING work is a thing of the past.
The problem lies in our perspective of work as a necessary thing for every individual to be useful, significant and required to be a member of society. Is it time for a change?
What do you think?
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How do we square this problematic circle? Is society even ready to acknowledge automation is destroying more jobs than its creating?
How do we make automation the enlightening boon it should be to everyone, offering time to improve our skills, enhance our education and creating artistic or creative opportunities which benefit society?
What will it take for humanity to need to consider new ways of dealing with our economic model, perhaps even transitioning away from it in order to create new ways of dealing with the growing unemployment crisis?
What do you know about the concept of “Basic Income?” Do you believe it may offer a solution to our impending economic crisis?
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