Why Technology won’t Take Our Jobs Away => Day by day we increase our contact with technology that makes our life easier. Things like shopping or getting documents from Social Security have become so much easier than a few years ago. Back then, if you needed a document, you needed to go to the nearest Social Security office, wait a few minutes/hours, and then be attended by someone who, hopefully, would get you what you needed. This often meant that you would lose a morning of work. Nowadays, you just go to the online Social Security page and get what you need.
Some people say that this is taking people’s jobs away. Of course, if you can get what you want directly from a website, there is no need to have someone permanently attending people to print documents. But is this really a bad thing?
Fifty or sixty years ago, all production lines were fully composed of humans. Each with a very specific function like pressing a button. Now, most work is done by robots. Despite humans having the ability to become experts at what they do after doing the same thing several times, the error rate is still very high when compared to a robot. Was this taking people’s jobs away or is it removing the machine’s work from humans?
Give to Humans what is Humans’ and to Machines what is Machines’
Human work should be directed to what machines can not (at least for now) do. Humans are reserved for the rights of innovation and decision making. No one should be pushing a button eight hours a day and call it a job.
Besides, when a job goes down, some are just rising. Every robot or technology that has “taken people’s jobs” need maintenance and upkeep. Most of the time, this is done by someone other than a robot.
The day will arrive when Artificial Intelligence will enable machines to do even more than they are capable of now. There are already prototypes that can do medical diagnosis with a lower error rate than an actual doctor. When that day arrives, society will have to adapt to the current reality: it’s almost impossible to compete with a robot’s quality (being that accuracy, productivity, etc). We all have to be ready to accept that some things that needed a person to exist, don’t need anymore.
Adapt to your reality. It’s one of the best things you can learn to do.