Hey Steemians
The world is changing at an astounding rate with new innovations being pushed out into the market why faster than we ever thought was possible and faster than our minds, our current political and societal structures can handle. Technology improvements like any sort of investment are one of compounding interest, the billions the world spends now on AI, Automation, IOT, 5G, Blockchain and cryptocurrency will scale and pay off way more over the coming years.
The ROI is there and will always be there, even if 90% of tech companies fail and that money is lost the 10% that do will amount to multi-trillion dollar changes in the world economy
Which is why trillions of dollars are going into technology companies each year around the world to try and make tasks easier, faster and cheaper. Technology is changing so many things about our world.
- Communication is changing
- Sourcing information is changing
- Trading money and commodities are changing
- Jobs are changing
- Manufacturing is changing
- Transport is changing
- Education is changing
The technological revolution seeping deeper into society
Technology is the industrial revolution, the gold rush and the energy rush all combined into one and while companies are hyper-focused on creating new tech to improve consumer lives and business functions, we're not looking at the impact these technologies are having on larger stage.
If you think of what social media has done for sharing information and the new problems we now face having these platforms be our source of information and how we're still trying to figure out the best way forward. Imagine the impact similar technologies will have in the field of say transportation and manufacturing and more.
We only have to look as far is Amazon to realise how technology and robotics are disrupting retail markets at scale. If we keep on this way Amazon, Wish, Alibaba and Flipkart could be responsible for the majority of the world's commerce, which is a scary thought but not completely outlandish.
Image source: Social.eyeforpharma.com
We need jobs? No, we need a purpose
While I could talk at length about the impact of technology has and will have on the world and its future, it would drown out the message so I'd like to focus on one the key area's technology will disrupt and that is the job market. In the coming 5 years, say 10 at most the following jobs will be affected for sure.
Transport
Transport is going to be automated very soon, we seeing self-driving cars and trucks are slowly but surely making their way into the mainstream market and it won't be long before they're starting to take away jobs of transport drivers around the world. Transport and freight employ millions of people directly and indirectly if we simply look at long haul trucking as an example.
If there are no longer truckers transporting goods, there would be no need to stop, filling stations, motels, restaurants and convenient stores and even towns that relied on these stopovers as an income will suddenly see that income dry up and those businesses may not be able to sustain themselves further impacting job loss and entrepreneurship.
Call centres
Automated voice messaging and robocalling are already the scourge of many consumers but this is only the beginning as we constantly feed this AI data through our interactions they will improve and become undisguisable from a real person. Once we reach that phase there will be no need for inbound or outbound call centre work and the millions of people who do these jobs will be out of work in an instant.
Retail
We are already seeing the effects of Amazon and drop shipping on local retailers and malls with stores starting to close and malls struggling to keep their foot traffic viable for stores to want to rent their spaces.
While online shopping is only disrupting a section of retail it won't stop there and will continue to eat at local retailers with bulk buying they can provide cheaper prices or worse they allowing retailers to sell their products through them instead of directly to the public will see stores call it quits and only make these online retailers even more powerful.
Jobs in every facet of the value chain that is retail will be affected as logistics become centralised and completed by a few highly skilled people instead of entry-level workers and school leavers looking for their first job.
It also makes it harder for small business owners in the retail space to want to start or even continue as their niches are cannibalised by large digital players.
Manufactering & Construction
Why pay workers by the hour and risk injury on the job and having to fork out workmans compensation and taking out insurance on peoples lives when I can get robots and soon enough 3rd printing of parts and even buildings.
Admin & backoffice work
Admin and back office work take up a considerable amount of resources, paper and man hours by pushing everything directly into a computer system the AI will be able to sort plenty of common issues and only need a few moderators should certain tasks not compute with the system.
Clerical work will be removed from many large corporates like banks, insurance, travel and any sort of process that requires documents to be processed or verified.
Financial services & Legal services
Blockchain and smart contracts along with AI will soon make plenty of jobs like entry-level legal work, insurance brokers and financial consultants obsolete. Drafting up agreements and contracts will be done online via smart contracts and verified via biometric technology and dispersed on the blockchain for immutable proof.
Why would you need a lawyer or a financial advisor (who is often paid on commission) if it can all be done directly in an instant? Any way these companies can save money and reduce time on processes you'll be sure AI will become a handy option.
Medicine
While it may be a long time before robots are operating on people it's by no means far fetched. We're already seeing radiology looking like one of the first medical practices to be absorbed by tech as no doctor can ever compete with technology when it comes to detecting anomalies on scans regardless of how good they are at the job.
Anything with a distinct set of rules and basic cognitive functions has the abilty to be automated.
Education
When you think of 5 years that's the time it takes to get a degree these days and many kids who are still in school are being prepared for jobs that won't exist by the time they're finished with their academic career.
Educational institutes will really need to act fast and look at reworking their courses and offerings to keep in line with the job market or face pushing millions of kids into a world they have no aptitude for and essentially crushing their future.
Millions of jobs obliterated faster than they can be replaced
As you can now see millions of jobs are going to be obsolete now and over the next 5 - 10 years they will be almost non-existent and there is absolutely no plan in place for what we are going to do with this marginalised workforce.
- There are only so many with the ability to be retrained for new jobs
- There are only so many who could open a new business
- There are only so many who could move to other parts of the world for work (where automation has yet to reach)
Unfortunately, a large population will be sitting there twiddling their thumbs while bills pile up and not knowing what to do with themselves. If we take the US for example where automation has hit the hardest we can see the following stats of how their society is coping with these changes.
Reports show that the US is starting to sink into the following compared to previous years
- Lowest rate of new businesses
- Lowest rate of new jobs
- Lowest rate of new travel for work
- Lowest rate of new marriage
- Highest rate of suicide
- Highest rate of drug overdose
Yes, this could be affected by a number of other reasons but we cannot discount the fact that job loss is a considerable factor.
If we look at how Trump won the election his ploy was simple, keep immigrants out, more jobs for Americans, America will be great again. This message resonated with the swing states which have had major job loss due to automation in manufacturing. This is really no coincidence, surely?
Misguided anger
Since the people who are affected by these changes are your average consumer and worker they do not see the bigger picture on how the economy is changing. All they see is they're out a job and things are getting more expensive and putting additional pressure on their way of life. Many of these people do not have savings and live paycheque to paycheque so the moment income is disrupted there is a greater knock-on effect.
Studies have shown that when people are under financial pressure like job loss or debt their rational thinking and IQ drops considerably as they struggle to make sense of why they are a victim of their circumstances.
Couple that with misinformation from online sources, lazy journalism and the echo chambers the internet provides through information aggregators like Google and Facebook means a recipe for disaster.
Keeping tech innovations in job replacement out of the mainstream media allows for this hate and anger to fester and not having a face or reason to point at many opt for the immigrant issue. Its the immigrants taking our jobs and they need to go. This is why racism and sexism have become so prevalent as people search for simple answers to why they are in their current situation.
But surely an immigrant who may take a job and are willing to take less money can only take 1 job, whereas a robot or AI can take 10 - 100 jobs easier and cheaper. Yes, this makes sense but if no one is telling you your jobs are being outsourced to AI here's your last paycheque and an alternative you probably won't know.
Which isn't to say that you need to point fingers or voice your anger at tech companies who create these technologies. I think that proper due diligence and impact studies are being neglected with regards to human resources displacement through tech and its a disservice to the workforce.
Finding new coping mechanisms
The cannibalisation of jobs and displacement of workers due to AI and automation is only going to get worse as technology improves. The bottom line here is money is being centralised by the wealthy through this "trickle up" the economy and if we don't put into place radical changes we're headed for the dystopian society we've seen in movies.
We can fight against it, we can complain about it, we can meme it but nothing is going to change the fact that we're going to have to live with it and we're going to have to adapt to it and fast.
So what is the right answer? I'll tackle this in my next post, I think I've rambled on enough!
Let's connect
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