Job Conjecture

Life is such a breeze. My day was laid out for me when I awoke. A schedule was superimposed over my news feed displayed on the wall of any room I happened to occupy. Breakfast was ready, according to what I said I wanted after the alarm went off. A shirt was waiting, pressed and warm, and my watch displayed any last information about what I might need to bring with me for the day.  The car ride to work took longer than usual, giving me extra time to read a file for my first meeting at 8:00 a.m.. Fortunately traffic was fairly light and smooth, helping my automatic driver navigate obstacles without some of the herky-jerky that can sometimes come from those human drivers still operating their vehicles manually.

In my office, my glass desk held electronic files of all the information I might need to navigate the week. Proposed itineraries and action plans created by my digital assistant (SHELLY) for events coming up in the next quarter were included on the far right. I can consider those during the "reflection" time SHELLY has carved out for me later in the day. For more immediate needs, a simple touch of the file associated with any upcoming meetings laid all pertinent information out on the desk for review. The first meeting covered a market I wasn't very familiar with, so I asked SHELLY to do some searching on characteristics, sizes, communication channels, and the like. Instantly the data was before me in an easy to read spreadsheet, with sales and profit projections suggested in a footnote.

Many meetings are held in my office, with other meeting participants located remotely sitting around a virtual table in front of me. Their images are live and in real time. In most cases, I never have to leave the office. I could do the same thing from home, but then I'd miss the "coffee clutch" opportunities to explore the nuances of issues and people only available through face to face engagements. SHELLY sprinkles those opportunities throughout my calendar, based on algorithms that deem which relationships and engagements might have the most impact on achieving my goals, or the goals of my business.

That's how my imagination extrapolates current developments in information technology. The potential for this technology to enhance life, improve safety and longevity, and improve productivity, actually doing the work that makes up significant parts of our day, seems to have only had its surface scratched in this past decade. As IT evolves into the development of artificial intelligence (AI), the possibilities grow exponentially. IT has been great at developing tools for doing repetitive and mundane "work", and creating information to feed patterned decision-making.  AI offers the opportunity to do work that requires independent learning, extending that learning into problem solving that requires creativity. Jobs previously thought to require skills and experience not replaceable by machines (robots), are no longer exempt from being replaced by automation.

Lawyers,  financial advisors, and administrators are part of the list of conceivably replaceable or augmentable (by machine) occupations. Not just low level, middle class occupations, but high paying occupations, too. This is in addition to the on-going trend of job reduction through automation experienced in manufacturing and administration. On the flip side, all kinds of new jobs are being created. Just think of Google, Apple and Facebook. Jobs that take advantage of the new intelligence, directing it to solve problems that can't be addressed with common scientific means.

We're not talking decades before significant job transformation impacts our economy, but rather years, if it hasn't already. Today's graduates will be impacted by the career decisions they make now. This is just one example of the accelerating impact of technology. Unemployment of the non- or less-skilled worker is probably not an intended consequence of this technology, but should be factored into our thinking about the meaning and role of jobs. What will those people that would normally fill those no longer needed positions do with their time? What will replace the role of work? What will provide the income and sense of purpose or self-worth that a job represents today? Is unemployment one of the unintended consequences of the application of information technology? Our intended consequence should be to provide our kids kids exposure to life paths that either meet job trends or create new sources of meaning and purpose beyond work in the traditional sense.

These are the questions that occupy some of my time in retirement, and direct my reading list.