Don't underestimate humans in future of work
Excessive automation at Teslawasa mistake,” reflected tech luminary Elon Musk. “Humans are underrated.” Forsomeone like Musk, whose identity and fortune is founded on cutting-edge technological innovation, this admission is as astonishing as it is humbling.
Hiscomments weremadein response to the production delay caused by his technologicallyadvanced, yet overly-complex, Tesla 3 production line.
Moretechnology introducedmore problems. Muskscrapped the whole thing, resorting to pulling all-nighters at the factory to overhaul the system and get things backon track.
Perhaps itwasmusk’s uncomfortable experience sleeping on the factory floor that forcedhim tocometo termswith the reality that robots won’t be taking all our jobs anytime soon.
There has been a “long history of leading thinkers overestimating the potential ofnewtechnologies to substitute forhumanlabour and underestimating the potential to complement it”, according TOMIT economist David Autor.
Weneed to tap into this potential, and shift our focus from worrying abouthowmanyjobs might be lost to automation towards adeliberate transition to a newworld of work where our distinctlyhumanabilities to be creative, work collaboratively and think critically for example —whatsomecall “soft” or “character” skills—will be the key to success.
Yes, the research is clear that jobs that involve a lot of “routine” and “predictable” tasks remain particularly susceptible to getting replaced by robots.
Cushioning the impact for those affected and helping themreskill are immediate challenges.
But, as Harvard economist David Deming says, “it has proven devilishly difficult to program amachine for even a short, unstructured conversationwith ahumanbeing, muchless to engage inthe kind of flexible teamwork that is increasingly needed in themoderneconomy.”
There will always be ademandfor thehumantouch, and thisdemand has already grown inrecent years.
Research has shown, for example, howjobs requiring social skills have grown twice as fast as those requiring maths skills over the past 30 years in the US. The real predicted growth, however, is in roles that combine “hard” technical and “soft” interpersonal skills, like doctors, engineers, or computer scientists working in group settings.
Big data analysis of job advertisements innewzealand supports this finding, showing that the kinds of jobs set to grow here involve these complementary skill sets.
The time is right to reshape our education, training, and development systems accordingly.
Oneopportunity here is to promote the ailing liberal arts and the humanities alongside science, technology, engineering and maths. Another is to further support parenting and programmes that lay the foundation for these skills in the early yearswhen young brains are at their most malleable.
Humanshave been underratedwhenit comes to the future of work.
Weneed not view the future as a threat—with nightmarish visions of machines causing mass unemployment—but rather one of opportunity: where jobs of the future harness the complementary strengths of humansand technology.
Wemust, as Andreas Schleicher from theoecdputs it, forget about developing “second-class robots” and moreon “first-class humans.”
There will always be a demand for the human touch, and this demand has already grown in recent years.
Kieran Madden is research manager at independent research and public policy think tank the Maxim Institute