Ned Ludd was a textile worker in 18th century England. He was a regular fellow, just like you and I, who happened to like his job; in fact, he loved it. So when the industrial revolution brought forth inventions like automated textile equipment, his job was threatened like never before. One day, in what was described as a “fit of passion,” Ludd smashed two mechanical knitting machines to the ground. This began the rebellion of Luddites.
Luddites were British weavers and textile workers who objected to the increased use of automated looms and knitting frames. But today “Luddite” is a term with a rather infamous meaning – people who fear new technology.
Ned Ludd’s story encapsulates the idea that as long as machines have existed, economists and workers alike have feared that they are making humans obsolete. Just as previous industrial revolutions threatened jobs and livelihoods with technology, the “fourth industrial revolution” is making a case for replacing humans with more efficient algorithms and automation at the workplace.
The future is now
As technologies like cloud, IoT, AI, and big data continue to grow, the role of machines as “tools” to increase productivity is fading. Instead, machines are becoming workers.
Take, for instance, Amazon’s Kiva robots which can plan, control, and navigate to fill warehouse orders four times faster than their previous system. Or IBM’s Watson which processes up to 60 million pages of text per second and produces medical diagnoses and treatment recommendations. Or The Grid, an AI website design platform where “AI websites design themselves.”
The future is here and it’s uncertain. It’s even more disturbing when you think about what machines can take away from you. For instance, a blend of AI and big data analytics can help computers “learn” how to create and curate content that’s tailored for hundreds of thousands of customers – something a marketer can never do.
If you think I’m wildly exaggerating here, this is what the esteemed ex-governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had to say about automation:
“The emerging threat is not the guy in Bengaluru but the robot next door who’s going to take your job.” – Raghuram Rajan
And if your job requires repetitive work, more bad news for you. A study found that India’s IT services industry will lose 640,000 “low-skilled” jobs (i.e., repetitive jobs that require following a set process) to automation in the next five years. Obviously, a bot can handle such work better than you without even breaking a sweat.
To give you a glimpse of the future, ICICI Bank has made a move to automate 20 percent of transactions by March next year and Raymond, an Indian fashion retailer, is set to replace 10,000 human workers with robots in the next three years.
A faulty skill set
While automation may cast a scary shadow on jobs, we have more pressing issues at home. According to a report, only 17.91 percent of Indian engineers were employable for the software services sector, 3.67 percent for software products, and 40.57 percent for a non-functional role such as BPO.
The skill gap in our young workforce was never clearer than when 19,000 graduates applied for 114 vacancies for sweepers in Amroha, Uttar Pradesh this year. That’s as shocking as a statistic can get. And when you combine this skill-gap with automation, it’s not hard to imagine the blow on our workforce.
Hope over the horizon
However, all is not lost. In fact, history shows us that advances in tech don’t decrease jobs over an extended period. As the workforce adjusts their skills and entrepreneurs explore alternatives based on the new technologies, the number of jobs rise again.
Kevin Freitas, head of people operations at InMobi, shares similar sentiments about automation. “It’s not an immediate threat to jobs, as the pace of automation will not outstrip the pace of employment generating opportunities in the short term,” he said. “In the long run (by 2040), it is best for talent to move to higher value jobs that require discretion and judgment.”
Therefore, as long as the computational power grows, many jobs are going to be redefined rather than destroyed. Our best tools for the future are going to be upskilling and reskilling.
So, what can we learn to thrive and secure our career insurance, say, in 2020?
The magic you need
Speaking from a tech perspective, industries that will see high demand and lucrative salaries will be in big data, analytics, mobility, design, machine learning, IoT, and AI.
Why? Because when everyone with a smartphone and an internet connection is shooting infinite data into the web (yes, your Instagram, Snapchat stories, and Youtube broadcasts count), it becomes almost impossible to make sense of it. That’s the battle today’s tech communities are fighting: to make sense of the data, learn from it, and code that learning into machines.
Demand for data scientists and software engineers in machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision is already far exceeding the supply, both in India as well as abroad.
Kevin, with his HR leadership experience at InMobi and Flipkart, offers the following advice to young professionals:
“Employees and college students will also be well served by staying current by building their expertise in machine learning and NLP. If we learn and understand how machines are learning, we will always be a step ahead of ‘machines,’ because our decision libraries are way too advanced currently for machines to catch up within the decade. But, this will also help everyone benefit and be prepared for the tides of change that are gradually building strength in different industries.”
In a future where machines co-exist with us, it’s not hard to carve a place for ourselves. The world needs people who are capable of more big-picture thinking and a higher level of abstraction than computers. By combining human ingenuity with raw computing power, we can create a workforce more productive than ever.
And in this future, if you find yourself stuck in a lifeless job, remember: learn, relearn, repeat.
Source: Tech in Asia