
When particular tasks are automated, becoming cheaper and faster, you need more human workers to do the other functions in the process that haven’t been automated.
#Will ai take over transportation dispatch full#
In 1961, President Kennedy said, “the major challenge of the sixties is to maintain full employment at a time when automation is replacing men.” In the 1980s, the advent of personal computers spurred “computerphobia” with many fearing computers would replace them.ĭespite these fears and concerns, every technological shift has ended up creating more jobs than were destroyed. When fear or concern is raised about the potential impact of artificial intelligence and automation on our workforce, a typical response is thus to point to the past the same concerns are raised time and again and prove unfounded. The Luddites were textiles workers who protested against automation, eventually attacking and burning factories because, “they feared that unskilled machine operators were robbing them of their livelihood.” The Luddite movement occurred all the way back in 1811, so concerns about job losses or job displacements due to automation are far from new. Brookings writes, “The United States would look like Syria or Iraq, with armed bands of young men with few employment prospects other than war, violence, or theft.” With frightening yet authoritative predictions like those, it’s no wonder AI and automation keeps many of us up at night. The Brookings Institution suggests that even if automation only reaches the 38 percent means of most forecasts, some Western democracies are likely to resort to authoritarian policies to stave off civil chaos, much like they did during the Great Depression. How could such a shift not cause fear and concern, especially for the world’s vulnerable countries and populations? McKinsey reckons that, depending upon various adoption scenarios, a utomation will displace between 400 and 800 million jobs by 2030, requiring as many as 375 million people to switch job categories entirely. McKinsey suggests that, in terms of scale, the automation revolution could rival the move away from agricultural labor during the 1900s in the United States and Europe, and more recently, the explosion of the Chinese labor economy. A two-year study from McKinsey Global Institute suggests that by 2030, intelligent agents and robots could replace as much as 30 percent of the world’s current human labor. Technology-driven societal changes, like what we’re experiencing with AI and automation, always engender concern and fear-and for good reason.

But as AI and automation becomes increasingly capable, how will this alternative labor source affect your future workforce? In this article, we’ll take a look at both some optimistic and pessimistic views of the future of our jobs amidst increasing AI capabilities. Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a thing of science fiction, it exists in the world all around us, automating simple tasks and dramatically improving our lives.
