The Impact of Technology on The Future of Work

Over the years, work and industry have developed greatly and have created numerous opportunities that would never have been considered when the concept of ‘work’ was initially introduced. There are three main ‘events’ that have been taken over the past two hundred years to arrive at our society today, as well as in the future. The first is the industrial revolution of 1765; this time period was witness to the emergence of mechanisation. Mechanisation allowed for industry and machinery to replace agriculture as the basis of the economic structure of the society. This was later followed by the second and third revolutions in the 19th and 20th centuries, which was characterised by new technological advancements, creating new industries and giving rise to an era of high-level automation in production. Society has seen a rapid and impactful ‘switch’ from labour-intensive fields, such as agriculture, to technology-centralised areas to automate production. These three revolutions all saw increased living standards, increases in wages and rises in employment numbers - however, will this be the same in the future of work?

A fourth industrial revolution is clearly in progress in the world of today, building upon this digital revolution that has been taking place over the past number of decades. Today’s work is centered around the idea of emerging technologies that disrupt industries all over the world.

Our society has progressed into one where, today, the concept of ‘one job for life’ does not hold so true. This was very common a number of years ago; a world in which stability and security were rated highly. The 1990s, however, was the decade that saw a boom within the IT sector, leading to a decline in visibility of this notion. Switching careers proved to have a number of advantages that were not seen before, such as career development, better opportunities and different experiences. Nowadays, this idea is almost nonexistent as ‘Generation Z’ are those who occupy the market. Frey and Osborne’s 2013 study has been cited in over 4000 academic articles. They modelled the characteristics of 702 occupations and categorised them in accordance with their ‘susceptibility to computerisation’. The algorithm-based model concluded that 47% of American jobs (including these in sales and office administration) were in the ‘high risk’ category. For example, one of the occupations that the study categorised as ‘automable’ were waiters and waitresses. This was proven correct in 2016 with the opening of the waiterless restaurant chain, ‘Eatsa’.

Frey and Osborne’s study also demonstrated that the potential scope of automation is huge, similar to the period before the Second Industrialisation Revolution when electricity and the internal combustion engine made many of the jobs that existed in 1900 redundant. However, countries have taken varying approaches to automation. The International Federation of Robotics, the ‘robot density’ (that is, the number of industrial robots per 10,000 manufacturing workers) in Britain was 85 in 2017, compared with an average of 106 in Europe, and 710 in South Korea. In addition, many studies have found that skills that are likely to be in demand in the automated world include interpersonal skills, cognitive skills and emotional intelligence competencies.

While the future of work is, of course, impacted by the progressive rise in automation, it will also be affected by other trends such as globalisation, population ageing, migration patterns, urbanisation and the green economy. However, the future of work must, in my opinion, represent an attractive offer for everyone, irrespective of class. On the one hand, we were promised that robots and artificial intelligence would remove many of the routine, tedious jobs in which many workers are presently engaged. However, this has not happened to the extent promised. Although some proponents of technology dream of embedding silicon chips into human bodies, the opposite has actually been the case, with human bodies being embedded in algorithmically controlled companies. For example, the warehouse workers of Amazon, the ride-sharing drivers for Uber and Lyft and the the food delivery cyclists of Wolt and Foodora are all ‘controlled’ by software and exist in the ‘gig economy’ denied of basic employment benefits. In my view, many of the undoubted benefits of disruptive technology will be undermined by human tendencies towards exploitation and inequality, which cannot go unchecked by regulators and governments.