IMPLICATIONS OF AI AND ROBOTS ON THE FUTURE OF WORK
PART I
No! Our current Digital Transformation does not transform jobs, it just destroys massively them, and that’s why!
I’ve been writing this since 2017 (see part II -adapted to 2023- resulting from an interview with Rosy Roselyne FABRY, and part of some of my talks at this time, dating from …2017… not much has really changed currently! … except for the advent of course of generative AI systems which further accelerate the need for a responsible tech ecosystem!), I’ve been saying it in my university courses on the economics of innovation for just as long… and it’s still always just, or much more!, as topical! (which is not really to my liking of course! :((
The macroeconomic aspect determines the micro economy. So, let me first look at the macroeconomic state of our economy in the current digital era. Today, everyone agrees that we are in years of AI. I think that’s correct, but … incomplete in the analysis. Indeed, we could rather say that we are in years of AI AND BigData. AI exists for more than 30 years, and for around 10 years in its “modern” form – modern meaning exploiting the power of microprocessors, and their ever-increasing computing capacity. What has changed for 10 years, is the advent of Big Data.
So, AI has now an enormous amount of data at its disposal, which was not the case before. And now, the challenge of our societies can be summarized as follows: How will this new eco-system be organized, new paradigm based on massively unstructured digitalized information, and its methods of exploitation (artificial intelligence through machine learning, Deep Learning, neural networks, Data Science, and algorithms).
USA and China currently have a considerable lead over the rest of the world with their digital giants: US GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon et Microsoft) vs. Chinese BATX (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent et Xiaomi).The problem with these digital giants is that they are huge concerning their financial and market capitalization (for example, the value of GAFAM is more than twice as much to the GDP of France!) and at the same time there don’t create so much jobs at all! In our previous economic era, the biggest multinational companies, besides their financial strength (Ford, Exon, General Motors, etc.), were also the biggest suppliers of jobs in the world. Today, everything has changed. On average, these digital financial giants employ 20 times less than the multinationals of the previous industrial revolution, and this with up to 20 times more financial power than the « old » multinational companies that were fueling the world economy. It is clear then that we are now in a society where the labor market is becoming increasingly scarce. It is therefore an important fact of our new digital era: how will we organize the work of today, and tomorrow, labor scaled down by the world’s digital financial leaders, and this fact is also accentuated by the rise of hashtag#robots and hashtag#automation that disrupt several industrial sectors. I think we are at the beginning of this real automated work revolution where robots will replace massively humans in the few next years. The middle classes are, and will be increasingly precarious (because of the ineluctable scarcity of labor), the elites are, increasingly powerful, which subsequently also produce the fact that the emerging or “poor” countries can’t develop, by being not pulled from the top by the economies of “so-called” developed countries.
A problem arises, therefore, in front of this macro-economic situation: the regulation of technology, and of its very powerful eco-system. It is one of the challenges of the coming years.
PART II
Are people really afraid of artificial intelligence and robots?
Yes ! Numerous studies prove it. …
Precisely, two main points fuel the fear of AI:
- First, the fear of the robots who will take our work.
- And, in the long-term, will robots destroy or dominate the human being In the not too distant future.
The digital transformation can frighten more than one, indeed …
Effectively ! And it’s naturally human! The fear of change is old as the world we could say. All previous industrial revolutions have given rise to mistrust and fear.
So, how can our new digital era differentiate, or not, from previous industrial revolutions?
The current digital transformation can be differentiated from the previous economic transformations by the fact that it… follows them up!
Well. Let’s take an example … Let’s try to imagine the game of building a pyramid with glasses of champagne. A row, two rows, a third … we fill our rows of champagne … At first, no problem, the balance is stable … but at the end, for example, after the accumulation in height of ten rows, all can collapse at any time, right?
Well, so here, our tenth row jeopardizes the balance of the whole edifice that had been elaborated before, simply because this new row comes after all the others! With our new digital economic revolution, it’s the same thing! This one comes after many previous transformations, major or minor, that have already seriously damaged jobs. Taylorism first, then Fordism followed by the Toyotism, gradually increased productivity while transforming deeply the organization of work. So, for a long time, the machines have already changed the structure of work and rarefied it! And another big row has also been added, as with our glass pyramid, which can be called: globalization. Work without sharp skills shifted from so-called rich countries to emerging or underdeveloped countries. Unemployment has thus become increasingly important in our « rich » countries. To this, we add the layer of global deregulation with its important corollary: the financialization of the economy. The financial crisis of 2008 is one of the glaring proofs! Investments have tended to shift towards speculation and short-term profitability rather than towards longer-term investment in the « real » economy. And when business investment takes place, the dictates of increasing profitability (today many investments seek 15% of profitability in the short or medium term, whereas historically, in our modern industrial societies, the rate of profitability had always been around 5%), the dictates of high profitability « right away », brings about a lot of restructuring of enterprises and thus an enormous amount of job destroyed.
And what about the robots then?
Well, you have understood … add the layer « the robots will again eliminate a lot of jobs », after all the other previous destructive layers of work, so there, it is the drop of champagne that overflows the vase … or rather who made the pyramid collapse!
Many experts, yet, say that automation due to robotics and artificial intelligence will be, like the previous transformations, a process of creative destruction…
Yes, indeed … couple of serious studies have already been done on this subject… and their results give completely opposite conclusions according to the study you are considering! Some predict the apocalypse, an increasingly rare work in the near future and others conclude that jobs lost will be compensated by new ones created by the digital transformation.
What does that mean then?
In my humble opinion, as Mulder would say (lol!), The truth is out there!
Yes. Both types of conclusions make sense. Simply, the new jobs that will be created will be highly skilled jobs. The current unskilled staff will actually lose their jobs. It is advocated by the proponents of creative destruction, to train this low-skilled workers to the new jobs to come … even if this is done, in any case, maintenance or management of a robot machine will need for example one person while the robot replaced six workers! … so we are left with the impression that the results have fallen short of expectations…
So, the fear of robots taking our jobs is justified!?
No, not precisely… The point I wanted to reach and which remains the most important and critical key, is: the political will! When I say « political », with goverments policies, it also includes future economic policies organized by economic decision-makers.
So the « regtech », as we say today, would be the key?
Yes! I think so! One of the keys…
To overcome the obvious gross negative delta between destroyed jobs and new ones, our decision makers, politicians and business makers, will have to colaborate to create a new tech-social-economic ecosystem, with its new rules that will drive the new investments -private and public-, to manage the digital economic transformation (the « regtech » is so nothing but the regulation of the new digital paradigm).
Are there some possible ways for this regulation to avoid an increased employment crisis?
Yes. It seems obvious that we will have to focus on new economic and social sectors that are not being exploited today, in order to avoid a widespread global social crisis.
The ecological transition for example. With the help of AI and Machine Learning, we already know that we can better fight against global warming and climate change. By investing heavily in the so-called « green » sector, we will compensate all or part of the lost jobs due to robots and all forms of artificial intelligences entities.
Other insights?
The welfare of humanity …
¾ people of our planet live in very limited or downright deplorable conditions!
… Well, I think we « really » have to decide to develop those countries, African and Asian in particular -but not only of course-, who live in deplorable social conditions for the vast majority of their citizens…
Okay… But how?
By a « winner-winner » system! Yes: winner-winner!
For example, economically, developing these « poor » countries will bring new economic markets. Robots will build new infrastructures (and cherry on the cake people and animals won’t do the physically hardest works anymore) and this will improve people’s lives while the population will have to be trained to become self-sufficient and able to manage their own technical and economic system. This creates a « human » ecosystem that is also profitable for everyone, because let’s not forget, for example, the population of Africa is now 1.4 billion and it will increase very substantially in the near future!
Many other development paths, “TechForGood” models, systems, associated with AI, can easily be imagined, which certainly will be much more sustainable than just an universal basic income that would simply allow us for survival!
… we just have to be innovative…
And, finally, I would like to insist on the important point that everyone will win, the human, the earth, the animal welfare too, just if we decide to put the AI and the robots at the service, therefore of social and ecological progress, so basically, at the service of humanism. This will create many new jobs and new profits, while safeguarding the welfare of humanity.
Do I really believe that?
That’s another problem … but… I want to believe!
We will discuss about the fear of robots that will destroy the human species in a next article, okay?
I hope that this little article would help in the understanding of the future of work and of our future societies problematic a little better … finally… do not forget … The Truth Is Out There!
