The Future of Jobs
Since the invention of the wheel, humans have looked for new ways of making their life easier.
Now, with self-service checkouts at supermarkets and ticket machines in waiting rooms, it looks as though more and more tasks are being taken over by machines. Reports have stated that this ‘robotic takeover’ may even affect higher-paid jobs such as lawyers and accountants in the near future.
Economist Jeremy Thorpe, speaking on the ABC in 2017, said that over the next 20 years around five million Australian jobs are at risk of being disrupted by technology, either by digitisation or automation.
Behind every great machine is an even greater human.
This change should not cause too much anxiety in employees and students entering the workforce. If history class has taught us one thing, it is that history repeats itself, constantly.
During the Industrial Revolution of the 19th Century, many jobs were terminated by machines, but alongside machines were people who had to operate them. As a new type of machine begins to make simple-to-program jobs irrelevant, this process will be repeated – for every self-driving car, there needs to be a human to look after it and keep it in check.
So does this mean that everything will be business as usual? It depends.
Dr Damith Herath is an Assistant Professor at UC with over a decade of experience leading multidisciplinary robotic research projects. It is his belief that it is not a question of what we are going to do if these jobs are terminated, but how we are going to manage the change. 
Adapting to change.
“The problem is humans don’t evolve at the same speed as technology,” Damith said.
“The automation will take these jobs, and there will be no immediate creation of new jobs. It’s about how quickly the government and other structures can adapt to this change.”
So what can people do to adapt to this change?
One issue is that it may be harder for those who are older to find the time or capacity to relearn a new skill. While the younger generation, who are at the beginning phases of it all, will find it easier to adapt. Damith suggests that those who are starting their careers should look to future skills needed and find suitable courses or workshops.
Some careers are already in the process of becoming automated. For example, there are a lot of ‘digital’ journalists now writing the finance pages of certain publications. This is because certain jobs, including those in finance and law, work on algorithms that can easily be fed into a machine and completed automatically.
Be creative and original.
“I think journalists need to be more creative and investigative,” Damith advised. “Algorithms can only feed on what it gets fed. So journalists need to actually look deep into a story and explore it from different angles and different creative ways.”
The job market is a different world than it was 10 years ago, where people would be specifically trained as a nurse or a doctor. Damith believes that the idea of doing a certain profession and sticking to it is slowly dying out.
“Even now our education systems are changing,” he stated. “I mean you’ve got micro degrees and nano-degrees and online courses, so you need to be very open-minded and grab opportunities. It could be journalism one day, and it could be working with a robot the next.”
The key, according to Damith, is to be open to change. Employees need to be able to creatively solve problems, be flexible, well-rounded and able to adapt. He suggests that employees should have a specialisation, but at the same time be open to learning new skills in complementary areas.
“Have a well-rounded approach … have your core strengths but at the same time be open to other possibilities and ideas.”
The entire education system will change.
“I think people need to be more creative,” said Damith. “Some degrees, like engineering, I think will still have some stability until the robots start programming themselves!”
Will other degrees slowly disappear?
“We probably won’t be dishing out four-year degrees in another 20 to 30 years,” Damith believes.
“I think universities, particularly more advanced universities, are constantly thinking about the future of education, because the traditional ways of teaching are always getting swapped for new ways.”
Embrace change, be well-rounded and use your skills and creativity to stand out.
In the coming decades, as with previous history, people will have to adapt and mould with the evolving technology. The trick is to embrace it and not shy away from it.
“It’s a kind of precarious moment in time. The question is, are we ready from an evolutionary perspective to tackle these advanced technologies?”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-03/how-artificial-intelligence-will-reshape-our-lives/8674576
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