CAN WE ADAPT TO BEING REPLACED BY TECHNOLOGY?
When the pattern of work changes, companies will turn to services that match employers with freelancers and contract workers, writes SHASHI JAYAKUMAR and EUGENE GOH
I T is increasingly apparent that jobs commonly reckoned to be “safe” may in fact be candidates for an artificial intelligence (AI) takeover, with many knowledge workers themselves being candidates for displacement.
A 2015 research by McKinsey suggests that current technologies alone could automate 45 per cent of the paid activities. Some experts believe the effect will be comparable to the industrial revolution. Concurrently, workers are demanding, and companies are offering, greater flexibility in work arrangements.
Unlike the past, when the vast majority of work was full-time employment, bundled with benefits such as pension and healthcare, the future will be much more varied. There will be fulltimers, part-timers, freelancers, contract workers and other forms of relationships between companies and labour. Work hours may be shift-based, flexible, self-determined or totally undefined, so long as agreed output is delivered timely.
Historically, people have moved to new jobs as old ones are destroyed. Some believe this will continue, while others suggest that the outlook is less positive now. We should ponder the future for both the winners and losers, particularly if the intensity of disruption increases.
Naturally, the future will see a great deal of knowledge work au- tomated. IBM’s Watson computer, which won the American TV quiz Jeopardy in 2011, is now used to devise treatments for some cancer patients in the United States. AI is even making inroads into journalism, with some attempts showing that machines are almost on a par with human writers. This does not necessarily spell disaster for humankind.
There will be an elite that manages to ride the AI wave. Individuals in this group will have skills — creativity, abstract thinking, intercultural sensitivity and the ability to thrive in ambiguity — that AI will take much time to master. There will also be opportunities in tech-enabled growth areas like computer science, robotics, education and healthcare, in particular catering for an ageing population, possibly working alongside AI.
Of concern are two groups of people. First, those who risk seeing their skills become obsolete and have difficulty picking up new skills, which is likely to be more challenging for older and less educated workers.
Second, we should scrutinise the seeming promise of jobs in “the gig economy”. It does have its benefits — in supplementing income, buffering against unemployment and providing flexible work options. More broadly, the sharing economy, enabled through platforms like Airbnb, allows the monetisation of assets.
The story in the long run may be different. Companies are turning to services that match employers with freelancers, even as the risk for lower wages and inequality is growing. Most gig economy workers do not qualify for statutory benefits such as paid leave, medical leave and health insurance.
The net effect is a transfer of risk and cost from corporations to individuals. This group, particularly those for whom such gigs are their sole source of income, are badly hit by the combination of volatility in the income stream and the lack of statutory benefits. Besides these losses, individuals caught in these jobs often have less incentive to upskill themselves.
Guy Standing, professor of economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, has pointed to the dangers of a coming “precariat”, which he defines as an emerging global class with no financial security, job stability or prospect of career progression. Far from delivering utopia, technology and flexibility in how we work could ironically perpetuate an underclass.
There may be national security implications. The risk is that the gig economy creates a permanent underclass of people who do not see any way out of it and feel a sense of anomie. Their futures, from their own vantage point, will be debilitating and uncertain.
At the macro level, it is possible that there will be a permanent strata of groups campaigning in the name of social justice — for those who have been left out of the technologically-enabled future. There are already people arguing for universal basic income. Consider, for example, recent disruptive protests over local politics, gentrification and the cost of living that have surfaced in San Francisco, targeting the giant tech companies based in Silicon Valley.
Might we also see a revanche to the Luddites of the 19th century — individuals seeking to wreak revenge on technology? These individuals lived in an era of “reassuringly clear-cut targets — machines one could still destroy with a sledgehammer”, notes Steven E. Jones in his 2006 book,
Against Technology.
Economist John Maynard Keynes took the view that technology and machines would increase productivity to a degree that an abundance of leisure time would be people’s main challenge. That utopia has yet to materialise. He also theorised that as a greater proportion of the population found themselves liberated from the “economic problem” of struggling for subsistence, society might suffer from a “general nervous breakdown”, not knowing how to readjust.
A sort of breakdown might come to pass, but not the one Keynes envisioned. A real issue of our times may be how people, involuntarily displaced by technology, are unable to adapt or respond and the implications for the rest of society.
Shashi Jayakumar is head of the Centre of Excellence for National Security and executive coordinator, Future Issues and Technology, at the Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Eugene Goh is chief operating officer of a leading shift-worker hiring and management software startup based in Singapore
There may be national security implications. The risk is that the gig economy creates a permanent underclass of people who do not see any way out of it and feel a sense of anomie. Their futures, from their own vantage point, will be debilitating and uncertain.