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We Told You So! #4 : 47% of Jobs Could be Automated in Two Decades
Posted on January 21, 2014 by The Big PIcture
This is the 4th installment in our series: We Told You So! where we show prominent individuals, institutions, and media sources just now noticing what we’ve been saying all along.
In this installment, The Economist warns us that disruptive technologies are going to wreck havoc on the global economy, as nearly half of our jobs will be lost over the next two decades to automation:
…it seems likely that this wave of technological disruption to the job market has only just started. From driverless cars to clever household gadgets (see article), innovations that already exist could destroy swathes of jobs that have hitherto been untouched. The public sector is one obvious target: it has proved singularly resistant to tech-driven reinvention. But the step change in what computers can do will have a powerful effect on middle-class jobs in the private sector too.
Until now the jobs most vulnerable to machines were those that involved routine, repetitive tasks. But thanks to the exponential rise in processing power and the ubiquity of digitised information (“big data”), computers are increasingly able to perform complicated tasks more cheaply and effectively than people.
Clever industrial robots can quickly “learn” a set of human actions. Services may be even more vulnerable. Computers can already detect intruders in a closed-circuit camera picture more reliably than a human can. By comparing reams of financial or biometric data, they can often diagnose fraud or illness more accurately than any number of accountants or doctors. One recent study by academics at Oxford University suggests that 47% of today’s jobs could be automated in the next two decades.
Now, how does The Economist suggest we address this immense problem? Through education:
The main way in which governments can help their people through this dislocation is through education systems. One of the reasons for the improvement in workers’ fortunes in the latter part of the Industrial Revolution was because schools were built to educate them—a dramatic change at the time. Now those schools themselves need to be changed, to foster the creativity that humans will need to set them apart from computers. There should be less rote-learning and more critical thinking.
Though The Economist recognizes the coming social transformation, it appears that it only sees the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how this transformation is going to affect the global economy. If over the next two decades half of our jobs will be lost, over the following two decades that number is not likely to decline. Instead we are much more likely to lose about 95% of our jobs over the following few decades (as we’ve said here!).
No matter what cosmetic changes we make in education, taxation, or public policy, the current economic system simply cannot withstand the coming technological and social shocks.
Unless we want to witness a total global economic collapse in the next few decades, we need to move to a new economic paradigm that would solve the many structural problems of the current system and put us on a path to sustainable growth and prosperity for all.
We need to move toward a Flow Economy.
Posted on January 21, 2014 by The Big PIcture
This is the 4th installment in our series: We Told You So! where we show prominent individuals, institutions, and media sources just now noticing what we’ve been saying all along.
In this installment, The Economist warns us that disruptive technologies are going to wreck havoc on the global economy, as nearly half of our jobs will be lost over the next two decades to automation:
…it seems likely that this wave of technological disruption to the job market has only just started. From driverless cars to clever household gadgets (see article), innovations that already exist could destroy swathes of jobs that have hitherto been untouched. The public sector is one obvious target: it has proved singularly resistant to tech-driven reinvention. But the step change in what computers can do will have a powerful effect on middle-class jobs in the private sector too.
Until now the jobs most vulnerable to machines were those that involved routine, repetitive tasks. But thanks to the exponential rise in processing power and the ubiquity of digitised information (“big data”), computers are increasingly able to perform complicated tasks more cheaply and effectively than people.
Clever industrial robots can quickly “learn” a set of human actions. Services may be even more vulnerable. Computers can already detect intruders in a closed-circuit camera picture more reliably than a human can. By comparing reams of financial or biometric data, they can often diagnose fraud or illness more accurately than any number of accountants or doctors. One recent study by academics at Oxford University suggests that 47% of today’s jobs could be automated in the next two decades.
Now, how does The Economist suggest we address this immense problem? Through education:
The main way in which governments can help their people through this dislocation is through education systems. One of the reasons for the improvement in workers’ fortunes in the latter part of the Industrial Revolution was because schools were built to educate them—a dramatic change at the time. Now those schools themselves need to be changed, to foster the creativity that humans will need to set them apart from computers. There should be less rote-learning and more critical thinking.
Though The Economist recognizes the coming social transformation, it appears that it only sees the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how this transformation is going to affect the global economy. If over the next two decades half of our jobs will be lost, over the following two decades that number is not likely to decline. Instead we are much more likely to lose about 95% of our jobs over the following few decades (as we’ve said here!).
No matter what cosmetic changes we make in education, taxation, or public policy, the current economic system simply cannot withstand the coming technological and social shocks.
Unless we want to witness a total global economic collapse in the next few decades, we need to move to a new economic paradigm that would solve the many structural problems of the current system and put us on a path to sustainable growth and prosperity for all.
We need to move toward a Flow Economy.
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