<\/p>\n
According to the ONS, 1.5 million jobs are in danger of being in some way automated. But the ONS report does not tell the full story. The truth is, technology could have devastating economic consequences, or it could create the happiest workforce in history. Technology could destroy jobs, but it could put an end to tedium in the workplace.<\/p>\n
Roughly 200 years ago, the Luddites went around smashing up machines, so great was their fear that technology would destroy jobs; today we have academics and now esteemed compilers of statistics, such as the UK\u2019s Office of National Statistics (ONS) warning about how jobs are under threat from automation. But are they right?<\/p>\n
\u201cTechnology,\u201d says the one-time chess grandmaster, Garry Kasparov \u201cis the reason why people are alive to complain about technology.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet, complain we do. Roughly 200 years ago, the Luddites went around smashing up machines, so great was their fear; today we have academics and now esteemed compilers of statistics, such as the UK\u2019s Office of National Statistics (ONS) warning about\u00a0how jobs are under threat from automation<\/a>. But are they right? Or is technology simply meaning we are living longer, so that we can spend even more time complaining about it?<\/p>\n \u201cThe first industrial revolution began around 1760, with the Spinning Jenny,\u201d says Guy Kirkwood, chief evangelist at Robotics Process Automation (RPA) company\u00a0UiPath<\/a> \u201cprior to that, 98% of the population worked the land, now it is just 2%, but that does not mean that there was 98% unemployment.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0“AI won\u2019t destroy jobs it will transform them”<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n The chorus of voices claiming that AI won\u2019t destroy jobs is getting louder<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cWe think we have automated 10-20% of processes using traditional technologies,\u201d says Neeti Mehta, SVP, Brand and Culture Architect, at RPA company,\u00a0Automation Anywhere<\/a>, \u201cwith that we have increased life spans by 25 to 30 years, we have been to the moon. With RPA and AI, we think we can automate another 40% to 50%, think what you can do for humankind if we can free them up from that repetition.\u201d<\/p>\n Or as Kirkwood said: \u201cRobots will become net job promoters, they will create more jobs than they eliminate.\u201d<\/p>\n Part of the problem with studies proclaiming job losses is that they tend to focus on tasks and not the overall activities a worker might carry out. Take the classic study, from Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne, from Oxford University\u2019s\u00a0Future of Employment report<\/a>.<\/p>\n So sure, some tasks might become the preserve of automation, but that does not mean the jobs will.<\/p>\n In fairness to the ONS, it did say \u201cAround 1.5 million jobs in England are at high risk of some of their duties and tasks being automated in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n Does that mean we are worrying over nothing? That automation and job creation are like a horse and carriage, which supposedly go together like love and marriage?<\/p>\n According to economist James Bessen,\u00a0in the early days of the industrial revolution<\/a>, while productivity rose, wages did not rise in tandem. At first, each factory owner was quite proprietary about the technology they used. They would train workers to use it, but the skills the workers gained were not transferable, as a result, the employer had a kind of monopoly in the local labour market. It was not until, many decades later, that technology, supported by trade associations, became more homogeneous, and a labourer at one factory who had acquired certain skills found they could work for someone else and apply the same skills. At that point, wages rose. But the impact on the factory owner was still positive; rising wages created a more buoyant economy. There might have been \u2018trouble at mill\u2019, but not because of a lack of demand for products.<\/p>\n Or take another example, according to British army records, average height, a proxy for health, declined in the mid-years of the 19th century, before rising.<\/p>\n \u00a0 “Scaling RPA: before automating processes, improve them”<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Most enterprises aren\u2019t scaling RPA across their entire organisation, in part, because they don\u2019t understand their processes to begin with. Featuring more insights from HFS Research<\/a><\/p>\n In short, it took time before the benefits of automation filtered through to the labour market.<\/p>\n As Neeti Mehta said: \u201cAs companies transition their workforce, and make it bot enabled, we must look at this ahead of time. When we look at history and look at every industrial revolution, we always dealt with it but in the aftermath, now we have that history behind us, why not deal with it as we are transitioning?\u201d<\/p>\n In other words, learn the lesson of history, and apply it in advance of any social upheaval that may result from automation.<\/p>\n On the other hand, according to research; carried out by Dr Chris Brauer, and his team, at the Institute of Management Studies, at Goldsmiths University, University of London, and produced on behalf of Automation Anywhere, 58% of work activities, and 30% of tasks can be automated by robots, but only 5% of jobs.<\/p>\n Or, as Guy Kirkwood put it, technologies like RPA are not about \u201creplacing jobs, rather they free people up to do more fun activities.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0“Thank God it\u2019s Monday: Can automation really make us love our jobs again?”<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIf you take out the mundane; if you take out the boring; and if you take out the stuff that you can automate, you\u2019re left with the things computers can\u2019t do: being creative, being empathetic and being entrepreneurial \u2014 all of these are much more fun.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n He cites a customer of UiPath, who said. \u201cThe mood music has changed, our people are happier, and we now measure the service in terms of compliments rather than complaints.\u201d<\/p>\n Or, as Neeti Mehta said: \u201cPeople weren\u2019t put on Earth to transfer data from one system to another, but that is what so many of us do. Nobody wants to fill in invoices manually, or reconcile invoices manually using eyesight, instead, we want to create better products, innovate or have a four-day work-week.\u201d<\/p>\n The ONS produces statistics; it does not speculate on what jobs that currently don\u2019t yet exist, or are rare, will become popular.<\/p>\n It is certainly the case that some jobs will be destroyed by technology. Taxi drivers are not looking forward to the age of autonomous cars.<\/p>\n Cognizant has produced a report,\u00a021 More Jobs of the Future<\/a>, Euan Davis, European Lead, at Cognizant\u2019s Centre for the Future of Work said that the report \u201cpredicts that roles such as a cyber-attack agent or juvenile cybercrime rehabilitation counsellor will emerge in response to new types of warfare. Alternatively, positions such as voice UX designer will help individuals curate their perfect voice assistant, while machine personality designers will develop a unique character for digital products or services.\u201d<\/p>\n So is it fear mongering?<\/p>\n John Everhard, Director at\u00a0Pegasystems<\/a>, said that \u201cheadlines that lambast workplace automation are merely counterproductive. Rather than instilling fear in the youth of today via research that criticises AI, we need to promote the use of the technology in the workplace so that young people are more aware of its benefits and uses when they enter the workforce.\u201d<\/p>\n Euan Davis said: \u201cThe rapid evolution of working practices has resulted in skills resembling mobile apps, requiring frequent upgrades to stay relevant. Ultimately, the AI revolution will create as many, if not more jobs than it takes away. However, as the world of work continues to evolve based on new technologies, humans must increasingly evolve their skill sets to stay relevant and work in harmony with technologies, to ensure their jobs are not automated away.<\/p>\n \u00a0 “UiPath: RPA and the job destruction myth”<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Guy Kirkwood, Chief Evangelist, at RPA company\u00a0UiPath: \u201cOne of the big myths of automation is that it replaces jobs, it doesn\u2019t. Most organisations go into automation because they want to reduce head count, that\u2019s what they base their business case on and they are all wrong, that doesn\u2019t happen.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n But the transition may not be simple. How many former taxi drivers train as data scientists?<\/p>\n These are problems that vex some. At a recent Automation Anywhere, event, Dr Chris Brauer, talked about ethics by design. How organisations must build ethical considerations into their practices as they implement innovation, not after.<\/p>\n Neeti Mehta said: \u201cThat there is a commercial benefit as well as a social benefit to care about ethics.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you are not able to take your best resource, which is humans, you have lost.<\/p>\n \u201cHistory tells us you have to deal with these issues eventually; it is better to deal with it at the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n Guy Kirkwood focuses on how innovation can improve working lives. \u201cIn Japan the average Japanese employee works 60 hours a week.\u201d And in the land of the rising sun, there is a word for \u2018working to death; Kar\u014dshi. If Kirkwood is right, it is not jobs that will be destroyed by technology, it is Kar\u014dshi.<\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The technology could have devastating economic consequences, or it could create the happiest workforce in history. The technology could destroy jobs, but it could put an end to tedium in the workplace. Part of the problem with studies proclaiming job losses is that they tend to focus on tasks and not the overall activities a worker might carry out. So sure, some tasks might become the preserve of automation, but that does not mean the jobs will.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":442,"featured_media":2512,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[95],"ppma_author":[2975],"class_list":["post-1642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bigdata-cloud","tag-big-data-amp-technology"],"authors":[{"term_id":2975,"user_id":442,"is_guest":0,"slug":"michael-baxter","display_name":"Michael Baxter","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","user_url":"","last_name":"Baxter","first_name":"Michael","job_title":"","description":"Michael Baxter is Editor of Information Age<\/a>, Author, and economics and technology writer. He is also an accomplished public speaker, has spoken on disruptive technology, the economy, and Brexit at various locations in the UK and the US and facilitated conferences on GDPR and digital marketing."}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/442"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1642"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29276,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642\/revisions\/29276"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1642"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=1642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The lesson of history<\/h3>\n
Tasks not jobs<\/h3>\n
The future of jobs<\/h3>\n
Other jobs will be created<\/h3>\n
Fear mongering<\/h3>\n
Ethics by design<\/h3>\n