Manufacturing is on the move, migrating closer to able customers and available land, resources and infrastructure. For many companies that means North America is increasingly attractive. The bad news is robots are going to keep taking the jobs. We are all at risk of being unskilled labor in the future. See: When robots steal your job:
This rise in automation has only just begun and is going to change far more than the manufacturing sector. With the growth of machine learning and artificial intelligence, job losses will not be limited to assembly lines. The service industry, office administration, computer programming, and many other sectors are all on the cusp of automation.
Sure automated operations are highly efficient and can greatly increase productivity. But all the arguments in favor of greater productivity, make two key presumptions. The first is that there are customers able to purchase that increased production. Second, that hours freed up by greater labor efficiency are able to be used more productively in other pursuits.
In reality, unemployed workers make poor consumers and once human labor is not needed to provide for our own food, shelter, utilities, clothing or transportation, what other productive things will people do with their time? Sure some will devote their energy to solving the world’s other problems, but the masses, what will they do? Surf the net? watch shows? take selfies? At some point, more free time is completely non-productive where it does not improve health and life quality, nor increase available cash flow. This is where creative thinking is required, different than the prevailing economic theories about how to produce more product and stimulate more spending through debt.
Henry Siu, the UBC professor who specializes in automation and the decline of middle-class jobs says this question must be on the minds of every worker, leader and policy-maker today. Among other sectors, Siu predicts that the trucking industry could automate within the span of one to two years, sparking the loss of 8-9 million US jobs alone. His suggestion may surprise many: cultivate creative thinkers and study the arts.
How do we prepare for the inevitable job losses? Siu has a counterintuitive suggestion: avoid education that focuses on the STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering and math). This only trains people for jobs that are the next to be automated, like programming. Instead, we need a work force to take on jobs that computers can’t: to think laterally, to make subjective judgment calls an algorithm can’t, and to solve problems. Not game programmers, but game animators; not payroll clerks, but career counsellors.
The great irony of the robotic revolution may be the unexpected resurgence of the long-derided bachelors of arts degree—you still can’t automate creativity.
