Future Now
The IFTF Blog
Marina Gorbis talks Automation with Bloomberg News
On December 3, Marina appeared on Bloomberg News Live with Lisa Murphy to discuss the current United States unemployment landscape, and where it might head in the future. Marina forecasted that the 10% plus unemployment figures are likely to be a persistent feature of the foreseeable future, since “we are in the midst of [a] transformation that is changing how we’re organizing our economic activities.”
Our recent research shows that there are two kinds of technological forces driving this transformation. The first of these are the communication and desktop media technologies that now allow individuals and small groups to publish books, videos, and even feature films outside the organizational boundaries of the traditional media industry. The second is robotic automation, something that has been ongoing over the last 30 years. Traditionally, automation has occurred on the factory floor, taking simple and routine tasks off the hands of human workers and into the grippers of robots. Now, it is beginning to move into the realm of the white-collar worker, where the routine and repetitive tasks of clerical and administrative workers will soon be taken over by robots and electronic systems.
Increased automation has many worrying how we can prepare today’s children to be successful in a world of ever-proliferating robotics. By identifying the sort of things that robots can’t do—those tasks that are not routine and repetitive—we can shape education to better train students in skills like higher-level thinking, problem-solving, story-telling, and literacy in media. Some of this is happening outside school curriculums at the moment: at youth robotics competitions, where kids team up and learn to collaborate using multi-disciplinary skills, and at events like the Maker Faire, where do-it-yourself culture of all kinds is made available for people of all ages.
Whether or not you agree with the trend, an accelerating implementation of robotics automation appears almost certain to remain a factor in the present and future unemployment picture. As Marina reminds us, “across many … domains, we see these smart machines entering the workforce … in large numbers.”