The rise of robots
For the past few years, economists have monitored the rise of robots on how it would affect human employment. Last month, University of Oxford reported that as many as 47 percent of jobs can be replaced by robots in the next few years. The authors warned that we are now entering an era where machines will replace human and innovations will benefit only a few people rather than the rest of society. This inequality will bring more problems to the current global economy and the results will be devastating to several countries, especially developing countries that are depending on labor jobs.
An economist wrote: “The poor will get poorer, the middle class will be poor, the rich will become middle class, and only a few people will getting very rich and control everything. With globalization and innovations, many things will change but the most profound change will be in automation where technology will eliminate many jobs, especially in manufacturing and agriculture. With technologies the economy will require fewer jobs, most jobs will require higher skills so the lesser educated people will be left behind with no jobs and no future.” He warned: “Robots are dangerous, artificial Intelligence is dangerous, and automation will destroy most labor jobs. In the near future, factories will consist of thousands of robots with few people to control their works. Today industrial robots have already replaced the majority of manufacturing workers in the U.S although human and robot still work alongside but soon it will be fewer people and more robots as the costs of robots are decreasing. Company owners will ask: “Why hire people and pay them more when most jobs can be done by robots for much less? Soon, taxi and truck driving jobs will be replaced by self-driving cars and computer control trucks and most manufacturing works will be done by robots who work 24 hours without complain.”
According to several studies, information technology, automation and artificial intelligence will continue to replace human jobs and create a new economy where the highly educated will get richer and the rest will be poorer since they cannot compete with robots. There is only one solution: Improve education to develop highly technology educated people. Even every government wants to improve their education system; the fact is there is little on what governments can actually do. An economist wrote: “The 21st century is different from the past where government can control things. In this information age, it is up to the people to unleash their creativity from the bottom up, not top down. People will learn whatever they want and create whatever they like. The future is no longer based on economic five years plan or ten years plan but the rise of global entrepreneurship.”
Today a quarter of the workforce in the U.S is technology people who work in startups and it is growing fast. Young people do not want to work for big companies anymore as they want to control their own destiny using their own innovations. This trend will change the entire U.S. economy and soon will spread to others. Soon educated people will create more innovations, more new technologies, and contribute to create a new global technological economy. The new economy will be a global one where people collaborate and create innovations that affect everything. Currently there are confusions because governments do not know what to do, whether to encourage them or to control them. The reason is most economic theories are no longer valid as innovations destroy jobs but create new ones and in the transition time, the worst will happen in countries that cannot catch up in this technology movement.
With advanced technologies, soon robots and artificial intelligence will increasingly displace people from many conventional jobs. According to a report, most labor jobs will be done by robots and it is possible that over 500 million people will lose their current jobs in the next twenty years. This will be devastating news to developing countries whose economies are depending mostly on agriculture and labor industries. A well-known economist explains: “If we want our children to flourish in this technology society, we need them to understand technology deeply so they can influence the future of technology rather than be victims of technology. Parents must understand the technology trends and encourage their children to study STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) rather than just follow the traditional paths. Today we are already in the Information Age where everything is dictated by technologies and having technology skills is as essential as reading and writing.” He emphasizes the important roles that parents can do to influence their children. Even if parents are not technologically fluent, they can still encourage their children achieve fluency with sufficient time and effort.”
To some economists, entrepreneurship is the way of the future. Startups will be the key components of the new global economy. As startups are becoming larger and eventually companies, they will have to address social issues as they are creating knowledgeable society on their own terms because government policies and regulations cannot hold them back. Basically as things evolve and change highly educated people with be in the positions to make thing happen as they unleash their own power. As the whole world will change but nobody know whether it will be better or worse?
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
