You, Robot?

 

    It is no longer acceptable to be technologically clueless. The world is changing at a faster pace than most people will ever keep up with. The capacity on chipsets doubles every four years. Every minute, approximately 504,862 different people log in to Facebook, 138,889 new Tweets are made and 100 hours of videos are uploaded on YouTube for the millions of views generated in that same minute. Technology has rapidly become a necessity for daily interactions and business dealings for advanced nations, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. It is faster, cheaper, and easier to access than ever before. Most technology is created to perform tasks at a fraction of the cost of human employees: computations, line assembly work, transportation, and communication have all been irrevocably transformed by the implementation of advanced automation. Through the use of automation, technology will inevitably replace most basic jobs; without quickly learning to adapt to or innovate new careers, the job crisis many people face will become permanent.

     The labor force is divided into categories of skill, ability, and ingenuity. Most basic jobs require that the employee have some skill often provided through training, such as piecing together parts in an assembly line or delivering short pieces of communication. These jobs often do not pay very high wages, nor do they require higher levels of education. Many of these jobs are conducive to automation due to repetitive tasks. In today’s workforce, there is a lack of available job opportunities for those that are still unemployed. Available jobs that don’t require highly specialized skills, however, are becoming scarcer; the Associated Press has found that “almost all the jobs disappearing are in industries that pay middle-class wages, ranging from $38,000 to $68,000.”  Historically, assembly line jobs were some of the first to be irrevocably transformed by technological reform; human assembly work was proven to be much slower than the new automated systems, where “the time needed for the final stage of assembly dropped from more than 12 hours to just 93 minutes. Eventually, new Model Ts would be rolling off the line at rates as high as one every 10 seconds.” At six vehicles per minute compared to only two vehicles every twenty-four hours, the optimization of assembly line work was inevitable and the preference for a faster production model was obvious.

     Mechanical jobs that are not the only ones to have received complete overhauls; previously people-oriented jobs such as telephone operators and travel agents have disappeared, as have secretaries. In fact, the time-honoured front desk gatekeeper that became iconic in the 1960s has also begun to disappear. The Associated Press discovered that “more than 1.1 million secretaries vanished from the job market between 2000 and 2010, their job security shattered by software that lets bosses field calls themselves and arrange their own meetings and trips” because it is quicker and easier for them to arrange their own schedules with this new software. These secretarial jobs that have now been replaced by advances in management software fit the profile for the low- to mid-range skill and education required by the disappearing occupations.

     There are those who say that technology is not at fault for the loss of available jobs, insisting that technological advances have modified workforces for years with no ill effects. Instead, they posit that areas such as manufacturing have “been hurt by offshoring,” deflecting the reality that jobs have been cut due to both causes. However, some advocates for technology as a boon argue that "technology creates offsetting job growth in different occupations or industry segments. For example, word processors and voice mail systems reduced the numbers of typists and switchboard operators, but these technologies also increased the number of more highly skilled secretaries and receptionists, offsetting the job losses."

     At first glance, this assertion grants a more positive outlook on the possibility of newer, more valuable jobs being created to take the place of those replaced by the convenience and cheapness of automation. Bessen’s argument decries the threat of technology, instead substituting it for a positive new route for job applicants. Also of note is the belief that these changes from human-held positions to automated robots fulfilling these tasks positively affects the economy by allowing for cheaper price tags and greater distribution of desired products.

     Between the new jobs being created and the posited economical stimulation, there is an effectively compelling argument in favour of technology changing the workplace. However, in direct opposition to the claims of job creation is an MIT study that has found “rapid technological change has been destroying jobs faster than it is creating them, contributing to the stagnation of median income and the growth of inequality in the United States.” Even though there have indeed been new job opportunities created by new improvements in technology, the jobs being created are disproportionate to the amount that have been removed. The study has detailed some of the trends between the rising implementation of technology in the workplace, which provided additional productivity, and the stagnation of human worker job growth.

  Those that are currently employed may find that their job may not be as permanent as they would hope. An Oxford University study has found that “47 percent of total US employment is in the high risk category.” For the purposes of this study, the high-risk category is characterized by jobs or tasks that could be easily automated within the next twenty years. The study is a cross-occupational survey of 702 jobs in the United States. All of the jobs included were broken down into required educational levels and tasks used to complete them. They then computed the probability of automation for all of the jobs studied, and placed them in a list from least to greatest likelihood of human workers being replaced by automation. Some of the categories most at-risk are processing jobs such as underwriting and tax preparation, and repetitive duties such as those used in telemarketing, cargo, and freight. Many of us have already experienced technological reform in these categories through avenues like TurboTax or receiving robotized phone calls asking you to “Please stay on the line” so that you can be solicited. All of these employment categories have opportunities for faster, more efficient means of completing tasks through technology and automation than humans could hope to achieve.

     From an employer standpoint, those that are coined “job makers” are less concerned with who or what are performing the tasks: as business owners driven by the bottom line, their focus centers on productivity and profit. Erik Brynjolfsson, professor at MIT, states, “Productivity is at record levels, innovation has never been faster, and yet at the same time, we have a falling median income and we have fewer jobs. People are falling behind because technology is advancing… and our skills… aren’t keeping up.” There is less concern from business owners about the jobs that are being replaced by automation and technology because the progress in innovation and productivity is so very lucrative for them. As the automation rate rises, the “median income is failing to rise even as the gross domestic product soars.” This income stagnation is just as concerning as the lack of job opportunities. Without jobs, or a realistic income, it is unlikely that workers or former workers will be able to invest in the economy.

     Those looking for a job, or those in occupations that are fast approaching automation, should consider looking into tasks that computers cannot do. Opportunities exist in places “that are safest from becoming obsolete would include those that involve transferring knowledge from one area to another, or thinking broadly, creatively and integratively.” Jobs with characteristics such as these would fall into categories such as teaching, the arts, and innovation; technology is not able to generate abstract thoughts or invent new ideas. Occupations that would be difficult to automate would also include those best served by human interaction or problem-solving skills, such as therapies, and positions that require one to be emotionally invested, such as art fields. Because “technological progress is eliminating the need for many types of jobs and leaving the typical worker worse off than before,” the typical worker must now adapt or evolve to become more advanced and useful than is possible for technology to emulate. According to the study, “people are still far better at dealing with changes in their environment and reacting to unexpected events” than robots. As such, people looking for guaranteed work should capitalize on these strengths and become more adept at finding niches that humans excel in to succeed; secure employment has become a game of working smarter, not faster.

     Adapting to a new scenario or field may take time, but it is necessary to be flexible in order to be successful. During the time you spent reading this article, 2,524,310 new logins will have been recorded for Facebook and there will have been 694,445 new Tweets. YouTube will have streamed to over 688,706 viewers, and there were 500 hours of YouTube video uploaded. The technology required to automatically process all of these tasks will always dwarf a human’s ability to do the same; instead, people must focus on generating original content that can then be automatically processed and placed on the global medium that is the internet for all to see. For all of the power and efficiency of technology, automation is incapable of producing thought-provoking studies and observations, abstract theories and concepts, and actively engaging the minds and emotions of others through performances or visual representations of ideas. It is these areas that humans will shine in, and that we should work toward excelling in if we wish to thrive.