Driving remains one of my least favorite things to do, especially in downtown Toronto. Between congestion, construction, aggressive drivers and bikers who insist on completely disregarding all traffic signs, I often sigh with relief when I finally shift the gear into park that no one was hurt and the car remains unscathed.
However, I really enjoy being a passenger. It gives me the chance to enjoy music, talk radio, and conversations with my husband and kids. Even taking in the sites of the city makes me happy. So when a recent study came out asking U.S. drivers if they would hand over their keys in favor of self-driving cars, I’d align myself with the 20 percent of them who said yes.
I’m all in favor of automation, especially when it makes my life easier and it certainly won’t stop at cars. So let’s imagine how automation will impact our lives even 10 years in the future. You wake up; eat breakfast in the car while it automatically drives you and your kids to school. Then you instruct it to take you to the nearest coffee shop. In this case, it is a Briggo coffee kiosk. The machine, which is calibrated to mimic the moves of a champion barista, has already prepared your drink because you ordered in the car on your smartphone. The drink is prepared perfectly, since it memorizes each customer’s order but the only humans around are other customers.
Now that you’re in your car, well caffeinated, the big question remains: Do you still have a job to go to and if so, what is it? Automated cars by then may have disrupted the taxi, bus and truck driving industries. All those baristas have migrated into other roles in the services industry, if they still exist. Jobs in creative roles and in the knowledge worker industry have also been hit.
This really isn’t science fiction. One recent report from the University of Oxford examined 702 occupations and concluded that 47 percent of U.S. employment is at risk over the next decade or two.
Another recent report by Gartner predicts that business leaders aren’t adequately preparing for the deep business impact smart machines will make in the next 7 years alone.
“Most business and thought leaders underestimate the potential of smart machines to take over millions of middle-class jobs in the coming decades,” said Kenneth Brant, research director at Gartner in a press release. “Job destruction will happen at a faster pace, with machine-driven job elimination overwhelming the market’s ability to create valuable new ones.”
Still, I remain optimistic that our future doesn’t need to look like a dystopian, robotic apocalypse. What if automation doesn’t spell the end of work, a term popularized by Jeremy Rifkin’s book with that title almost 20 years ago, but merely the end of monotonous work?
The rise of automation may end up doing neither and both, according to Frank Koller, a writer about the workplace and the author of Spark, a book about the corporate addiction to layoffs. To explain how automation spells the end of some jobs, Mr. Koller, cites one major example: travel agents. Fifteen years ago, there was a travel agent on every corner. That work is all gone now, he observed.
In other cases, automation and IT has made work not only more interesting, but improved the customer experience, as in the courier industry. He recalls that a few years ago, to send a package, you would need to wait for a phone call to ensure it arrived. Tracking technology now allows you to continuously keep tabs on your package. We still need couriers but the customer experience is greatly enhanced. In this case, technology made the industry more efficient.
“The potential is really fascinating. The purpose of technology should be to make work more interesting, so that we can develop a society of “new artisans” who benefit from higher technology, making their jobs more productive and sustainable and keeping customers happy,” explained Mr. Koller.
The term “new artisans,” said Mr. Koller, is one that has come into use over the past several years to refer to the jobs in the middle — those in between baristas and hedge fund managers — which rely on a combination of intellectual knowledge and skills and some component of physical work, like plumbers or machinists. It’s these middle roles, which will either be most at risk, or have the most to gain.
At some time, Mr. Koller believes we need to open a broad dialogue about the purpose of IT and its impact on jobs since “it seems to see doing more with less human input as its prime goal.”
In other words, let’s focus on automation enhancing the work experience, rather than replacing it outright. This way, we can continue to afford daily luxuries, like coffee made with computerized precision.
