Good news! The glass is half full. Humans still have vital roles to play, this is according to Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAffee in their book, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. (188)
Brynjolfsson and McAffee write that there is, indeed, hope for those who are affected by technological unemployment. They explain that humans still play a vital role, especially in regards to the area of “ideation” where “humans have a comparative advantage over machines.” They write that “people and computers don’t approach the same task the same way.” (190, 191)
Frank Levy and Richard Muranane also share similar thoughts in The New Division of Labor, noting that pattern recognition and complex communication were the two broad areas where humans would continue to hold the high ground over digital labor. (Brynjolfsson and McAffee, 188)
As technology continues to develop and expand automation, it is likely, as we have seen, that jobs will continue to be eliminated. However, based on these notions that humans play vital roles, regardless of technology, it is not to be discounted that despite the elimination of jobs, there will be new jobs added at the same time.
“When technology eliminates one type of job, or even the need for a whole category of skills, those workers will have to develop new skills and find new jobs. Of course, that can take time, and in the meantime they may be unemployed. The optimistic argument maintains that this is temporary. Eventually, the economy will find a new equilibrium and full employment will be restored as entrepreneurs invent new businesses and the workforce adapts its human capital.” (Brynjolfsson and McAffee, 178)
In a Brain Pickings article, As We May Think: Vannevar Bush’s Prescient 1945 Vision for the Information Age, the Power of “Curation,” and the Need for Open-Access Science, it cites that Bush also feels there is no mechanical substitute for mature thought.
“He stresses, as many of us believe today, that mechanization — or, algorithms in the contemporary equivalent — will never be a proper substitute for human judgment and creative thought in the filtration process:
Much needs to occur, however, between the collection of data and observations, the extraction of parallel material from the existing record, and the final insertion of new material into the general body of the common record. For mature thought there is no mechanical substitute. But creative thought and essentially repetitive thought are very different things. For the latter there are, and may be, powerful mechanical aids.”
According to a 2016 Fortune.com article 25 Million New Jobs Coming to America, Thanks to Technology, Oxford researchers suggested at the time that “nearly half of the occupations in the U.S. will be computerized over the next 20 years.” Despite this, the article goes on to support the notion that despite the reduction in the traditional workforce, additional jobs will be added.
Robert Cohen, a senior fellow at the Economic Strategy Institute, states that “cloud computing, Big Data, and the Internet of Things will employ millions of people in new types of jobs. More precisely, Cohen figures that as a new ‘virtualized infrastructure’ gets built out over the next 15 years, as many as 25 million jobs will be created. He acknowledges that automation is certain to wipe out a bunch of positions, but he estimates that the net gain will still be around 15 million.”
Ben Pring, co-author of What to Do When Machines Do Everything, is quoted in a November 2017 MIT Technology Review article as saying that “although 12 percent of the U.S. workforce (19 million people) could have their jobs automated, 21 million jobs will be created as a result of technological advances.” The article goes on to state, “A new report by Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work lays out 21 new kinds of jobs that will be created in the next 10 years, employing large swaths of people impacted by automation. All the jobs fall under three main areas: coaching people to expand their skills, caring for others to improve their health, and connecting human and machine.”
So the glass is half full. Humans are vital and will find a way to persevere. Now, who poured the glass is the real question? If a robot poured it, a human will drink it. They can work together. After all, robots don’t drink water.