If people are so concerned about their jobs that they would vote for Trump, they will definitely short their fuses when they see what his administration has coming for them.
According to an article published in early April 2019 by the Boston Globe, that the congressional districts with the highest threat of automation affecting employment are linked with high concentrations of Trump voters. These people may not have won the popular vote, but have definitely been a vocal faction in the US. Sadly, the Trump administration does not even have Automation “on their radar”, according to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. The man they voted for isn’t concerned by the very thing that pushed them to do it in the first place. The best that can be done for them is to inform of what is really to come.
I have studied Computer Science for four years, five if high school counts. I have conducted research in the fields of AI & Machine Learning. When I say that people need to really understand the phenomenon of automation, there is definite credibility to that statement.
The human race has seen industrial revolutions on three separate occasions. These times were similar to today where the advent of technology replaced people’s jobs and revolutionized the way many live their lives. Fortunately, we have history of all of these times to look back on in preparation of Automation, the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”.
What makes Automation the next Industrial Revolution? From every way it has been described, even including how much people fear it will change the face of the earth, there is no better way to put it. And if we were to draw anything from the three previous industrial revolutions, there are two ideas that would be the most important.
The first is that human civilizations not only survived and thrived each time. The second is that the world was radically changed after the fact. Factories & machinery had never existed prior to the first Industrial Revolution, but now, modern manufacturing would not be recognizable without them. Who is to say that we are not on the forefront of another radical change? In the same vein, even modern experts might be barely able to fathom what civilization will look like after this revolution. In the face of this, I believe the public must be aware of several realities that we will have be facing.
According to a John Hopkins professor Tinglong Dai the promise of robotics/automation is, “to liberate human beings from the ‘3Ds’—dirty, difficult, and dangerous jobs…[to] focus on creative, personal, and original activities.” This first reality means people will no longer have to risk their lives, slaving away in dangerous jobs. Now that they will not have to continue such jobs, their jobs will have to shift to somewhere else.
The second is much more positive. Following this shift, there is a treasure trove of job opportunities. It has been documented in every media source that is even remotely related to the technology industry, from Forbes Magazine to CNN, that there are “more tech jobs than there are people to apply for them.”
For those whose employment will be affected by the rise of automation, my recommendation is to pick up new technical skills. The market not following the Trump Administration’s demands for lower-skill labor jobs. These jobs are most at risk of being automated. One can see how every task from ordering your food at a restaurant to screening people through US airport immigration can be performed by an automated system.
Third, the operative word in the previous statement is ‘task’. With the number of tasks one has to do for their job, a single machine cannot be designed to perform all of those. Instead, machines are designed to perform a single task. Take the ordering kiosks at Mcdonalds for example. For a worker who used to work the cash register as one of their job tasks, they would now have more time to prepare your meal, operate the drive-thru, and maintain the restaurant. With how many tasks are part of a job, it will be difficult to entirely replace a person with a machine.
But this, doesn’t discredit the previous 2 realities. These come together to show that the market will be slowly phasing out people from their jobs, but it will be happening nonetheless. Less people will be performing “3D’s” jobs, and more opportunities will open for them in the tech sector.
Science & the Public Intellectual 
Wow this is an eye-opening article! I myself have not thought much about automation until recently and I must say, I’m terrified. It is wild that our president is not taking the scare more seriously and now that I think about it, I have never really heard automation be talked about in politics and why is that?! It’s a pressing issue. I think many high school students will be choosing their college majors based on which careers will not be able to be taken over my machines and it will probably get more people involved in the creative fields.
LikeLike
This article is elitist and painfully unsympathetic. The opinions presented here are emblematic of the blind arrogance which permeates through Silicon Valley and other tech capitals. Yes, better technology is almost always a good thing. And yes, dangerous jobs should be limited as much as possible. But you would have to be dreaming to think the human beings being replaced by these machines are better off than they were before. The majority of these workers lack educations beyond high school levels. But you expect them to drop everything to go back for higher education? Not just school, but college for computer science, one of the most rigorous disciplines, one which requires countless amounts of previously acquired knowledge? Besides this point, what’s supposed to happen with the few companies which do achieve the upper hand on automation? What stops them from swallowing up all their competitors who still rely on human labor. This seems like the perfect recipe for polarizing populations between the haves and the have nots. It has always been this way, but with the advent of true automation, it gives the people who have, the option to no longer need the people who don’t have. The have nots have always survived as the workforce, what happens when the people who manage the force no longer need the workers?
LikeLike