How can everyone benefit in a new economy with paid jobs for only a few?
In 1921, Ragnar Tängdén, my grandfather, took over the farm from uncle August. Knowing Ragnar, I can say that he should have pursued a different career, but instead, he continued the path that his family had done before him and farmed the land for life. In 2021, hundred years later, not many children can continue their parents’ course as 2 out of 3 children will have jobs that do not exist today. The world of work is about to change forever.
Two years’ worth of digital transformation in only two months
Less than ten years ago, we still had to prove ourselves to work from home. In 2012, Microsoft introduced the work-from-home-day as a yearly event to take place on May 5. Microsoft wanted to challenge this notion of managerial surveillance and make the step into digital nomadism centered around the digital revolution. In 2020 and the early phase of the pandemic, Microsoft saw two years’ worth of digital transformation in only two months. These two events indicate a transition to a jobless future for humans in a world where robots and androids will produce everything we need. Or at the very least, a transition to the loss of jobs that we know of today.
A society that values work as a pursuit of life’s meaning
The challenge is to see how everyone can benefit in a new economy where there are paid jobs for only a few. However, it must not stop there. Compare this with when farmers in the mid 20th century created jobs for maids and servants so that everyone in the village could make a living simply because it was what you did for society. Now, how can we take on the complex challenge of improving social inclusion? The change in the world of work is so closely connected to equality and democracy, and this in a society that values work as a pursuit of life’s meaning. What we will do will change. How we will do it will change even more.
What are your thoughts? Agree or disagree?
A regulated and unbiased AI on our way to the singularity
With the infinite use of robots and androids, we can end the education of new clerks, lawyers, doctors, laborers, or other areas where robot process automation is easy to build. Already today, big data and AI predict judgment to an accuracy of 79%. We will creatively and ingeniously shape these machines. However, to secure the creation of a better world, we need to develop an ethical framework for equal distribution of wealth and a regulated and unbiased AI on our way to singularity, the point where artificial intelligence starts to self-improve.
How to use accumulating capital for the best
With the compounding interest rate and the exponential capital growth, we should touch upon how to use accumulating capital for the best and fight rapacious capitalism that will only increase inequality. We have for so long discussed a political initiative of base income for everyone. Still, it ends there, and we run the risk of investing in glittering technology while humans are suffering at the bottom.
Hand over the legacy of faith
Before exponential growth picked speed, Peter Drucker, the widely-known and influential thinker on management in the 20th century, said that the best way to predict the future is to create it. Today, we will need to add a connection with the world in order not to fall behind. These seismic changes in the world of work are good news. Once the robots and androids take over jobs, we get freed off from much of the struggle and toil to create a new sustainable world where the legacy of faith is handed over to the next generation. In the same way, as our ancestors did when they farmed the land.
Sources
2 out of 3 children will have jobs that do not exist today. The Economist (2019) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUc5oN_ffRo
Big data and AI predict judgment to an accuracy of 79%. UCL, University College London https://www.ucl.ac.uk/engineering/case-studies/2020/feb/how-artificial-intelligence-ended-court
Microsoft’s press release: Work from home https://news.microsoft.com/sv-se/2015/04/28/jobba-hemma-dagen-5-maj-arbeta-hemma-pa-fiket-eller-pa-resan/
Capitalism that will only increase inequality. The future of work: is your job safe? | The Economist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUc5oN_ffRo&t=288s
