The Future of Work: Where Machines Fear to Tread

During the First Industrial Revolution in the 1800s, machines replaced human muscle in some manual tasks, such as in factories and through the use of farm machinery. Throughout the Second Industrial Revolution in the early 1900s, we saw the emergence of new technologies that facilitated office work, and by the Third IR, clerical and knowledge workers began to be relieved of routine tasks that were more efficiently performed by machines. This current Fourth Industrial Revolution is a quantum leap in that it promises to bring the automation of intelligence - the computerization of tasks previously thought to require human judgment. So where does that leave us?

As Mark Twain might put it, past reports of the death of human jobs have often been greatly exaggerated. The “Luddite Fallacy” was a term coined by industrialists to describe the thinking that innovation would have lasting harmful effects on employment. This is about the 19th-century group of textile workers who smashed the new weaving machinery that made their skills redundant. The view that technology is unlikely to lead to long-term unemployment has been repeatedly challenged by a minority of economists, who argue that automation is “blind to the color of your collar.” In other words, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a factory worker, an accountant, a journalist, or a Hollywood actor: automation is coming for you.

We repeatedly hear that the jobs most at risk are on some level routine, repetitive, and predictable, with telemarketing, paralegals, and even fast-food cooks being the easiest targets, while jobs that require “genuine creativity” - such as being a scientist or developing a new business strategy - are cited as being relatively immune. Occupations that involve building complex relationships with people, such as nurses or social workers, are thought to be secure, along with highly unpredictable jobs – such as first responders.

According to the World Economic Forum, the 2020s are going to be a decade not of unemployment, but of redeployment. The WEF’s Future of Jobs Report 2023 suggests that agricultural technologies, digital platforms and apps, e-commerce, digital trade, and AI are all expected to result in significant labor-market disruption, with substantial proportions of companies forecasting job displacement in their organizations, offset by job growth elsewhere to result in a net positive. However, the report warns that “while expectations of the displacement of physical and manual work by machines have decreased, reasoning, communicating, and coordinating – all traits with a comparative advantage for humans – are expected to be more automatable in the future.”

So what lies ahead for humanity and which are the jobs for which machines need not apply? Currently, the WEF ranks analytical thinking as the most important worker skillset, followed by creative thinking, ahead of three self-efficacy skills – resilience, flexibility, and agility; motivation and self-awareness; and curiosity and lifelong learning. Dependability and attention to detail, rank seventh, behind technological literacy. The core skills are completed by two attitudes relating to working with others – empathy and active listening and leadership and social influence – as well as quality control.

If this all seems a bit too abstract, one thing seems certain - we will all have to become as agile and diversified as possible and have as many forms of talent and work skills as possible. The likelihood appears to be that in extreme cases our most ambitious children will have as many as seven or eight jobs, with the average adult working for many companies simultaneously rather than working for one big corporation.

What specifically are future-proof jobs? The truth is that no one knows. For example, projections on the evolution of Artificial Intelligence, as seen below, leave us with more questions than answers.

Examples of specialized jobs that may become more commonplace over the coming decade include Autonomous Transportation Specialist, Productivity Officer, Human-technology Integration Specialist, Media Remixer, Drone Manager, and Tele surgeon. On a broader scale, digital marketing specialists, video game developers, HR specialists, mechanical engineers, data scientists, and cybersecurity experts all seem destined to be part of the human firewall, at least for the foreseeable future.

Even today, automation has taken a giant leap forward with the recent introduction of generative AI tools that can identify patterns across enormous sets of data and generate new content. This is something that has historically been considered uniquely human. Large language models’ potential applications for businesses include writing code, designing products, creating marketing content and strategies, streamlining operations, analyzing legal documents, providing customer service via chatbots, and accelerating scientific discovery, leading industry experts to predict that a third of the hours worked by humans today will probably be automated within the next five years.

For the first time in history, we are seeing a workforce of hybrid intelligence – the coming together of human and machine intelligence. Yet before long we find ourselves asking that if the technology is genuinely better than the person at a role, why would we employ people? Industrial revolutions in the past have typically led to more employment, not less, but this time the jury is out as to which jobs machines need not apply in the future.