New jobs, new skills
There is a notion that technology such as Artificial intelligence, Robots, automation will take over all of our jobs and there is nothing we can do about it. The reality is technologies will destroy many jobs, especially manual and low labor works, but at the same time, they also create many new jobs. In the next five to ten years, there will be more technology jobs than today. Instead of job losses, people need to think about new jobs that require new skills.
Today many global companies cannot find enough technical workers. But in the near future, this shortage will increase because as new technologies are created, they will create new jobs. The character of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is everything will evolve when technologies change and there will be a continuation whirlwind of old jobs destroy and new jobs created. While there are different opinions on how technology will impact a country’s economy, but most people agree that many developed countries will benefit from technologies when many developing countries will suffer because they cannot change fast enough.
We are still at the dawn of The Fourth Industrial revolution where things are still changing and in a time where new skills emerge as fast as others become extinct, students must develop the ability to adjust quickly by developing an active “self-learning” attitude instead of passively wait until the training is available. Self-learning is the ability to learn without the guidance of the teachers or formal schools. The self-learning student chooses the subject they want to learn, find the materials and study on their own time and efforts. They also learn to manage their time, set their own goals, assess their progress and develop their own knowledge to do what they want to achieve.
Students often asked what will happen in the near future. I told them: “Expect the unexpected as nobody can predict exactly what will happen. I use the example that thirty years ago, when the Internet was new, how many people can predict about the smartphone, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and WeChat? How many people can predict that small startups such as Google and Amazon could become the largest companies in the world? Since technologies are changing at an accelerated speed, it is possible that in the next few years, the entire world will be different from today, especially when more technologies are being implemented all over the world.
In this fast-changing world of automation, companies still need human workers but they must have specific skills and some may not even be created yet. There will be needs for people who can create, develop, and manage technologies. To thrive in this uncertain future, students must develop the lifelong learning skills to keep up with changes. But the skills needed for the future are not just science and technology but also soft-skills such as Critical thinking, independent thinking, Problem-solving, ethics, teamwork, Communication, and Leadership etc.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
