Is Automation Coming For Your Job?
The Jetsons dreamed of a futuristic utopia in which we would have flying cars and robots to take care of work and domestic tasks for us. And, as logically follows, we would have more free time than ever in this new, automated society.
But the future isn’t turning out anything similar to what we expected. Even before the pandemic hit, technology was supposed to free us from nonstop work. Instead, our devices became tools that kept us locked into work and spilled over into evenings and weekends. Looking into the future, we expect that automation will fill our workplaces, pushing out humans in favour of robots. How much of this is true? Is this idea of an automated world like The Jetsons — interesting to think about, but hopelessly outdated?
Most of us are worried about artificial intelligence (AI) making our jobs obsolete. I’m not immune to this kind of thinking — I actually think about it quite often, especially as a recession is nearing. After all, most of the buzz about AI focuses on the doom and gloom of a robot-driven future where humans have been pushed aside.1 But what if we’re asking the wrong questions about how AI will change our lives?
Asking if automation will make certain jobs obsolete implies that there is a possibility that these jobs will be completely taken over by AI and the rest will be left alone. This misrepresents both humans and AI technology: Automation will rarely get rid of entire jobs, but it will change nearly all of our careers in some way.
Let’s explore some new questions to find out about what automation may change and what will stay the same:
References
- Wajcman, J. (2017). Automation: Is it really different this time? The British Journal of Sociology, 68(1), 119-127.
- Autor, D. H., Levy, F., & Murnane, R. J. (2003). The skill content of recent technological change: An empirical exploration. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118(4), 1279-1333.
- Brynjolfsson, E., Mitchell, T., & Rock, D. (2018, May). What can machines learn, and what does it mean for occupations and the economy?. In AEA Papers and Proceedings (Vol. 108, pp. 43-47).
- Sangster, J. (2010). Transforming labour: Women and work in post-war Canada. University of Toronto Press; Freeman, R. B., Gordon, R. A., Bell, D., & Hall, R. E. (1973). Changes in the labor market for black Americans, 1948-72. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 1973(1), 67-131.
- Acemoglu, D. & Restrepo, P. (2018). Artificial intelligence, automation and work (No. w24196). National Bureau of Economic Research.
- Brynjolfsson, E. & Mitchell, T. (2017). What can machine learning do? Workforce implications. Science, 358(6370), 1530-1534.
- Singh, P. (2008). Job analysis for a changing workplace. Human Resource Management Review, 18(2), 87-99. & Landis, R. S., Fogli, L., & Goldberg, E. (1998). Future‐oriented job analysis: A description of the process and its organizational implications. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 6(3), 192-197.
- Basawapatna, A. R., Repenning, A., Koh, K. H., & Nickerson, H. (2013, August). The zones of proximal flow: guiding students through a space of computational thinking skills and challenges. In Proceedings of the ninth annual international ACM conference on International computing education research (pp. 67-74).
- Agnoli, S., Vanucci, M., Pelagatti, C., & Corazza, G. E. (2018). Exploring the link between mind wandering, mindfulness, and creativity: A multidimensional approach. Creativity Research Journal, 30(1), 41-53.
About the Author
Natasha Ouslis
Natasha is a behavior change consultant, writer, and researcher. She started her own workplace behavioral science consulting firm after working as a consultant at fast-growing behavioral economics companies including BEworks. Natasha is also finishing her PhD in organizational psychology at Western University, specializing in team conflict and collaboration, where she completed her Master of Science in the same field. She has a monthly column on workplace behavioral design in the Habit Weekly newsletter and is a Director and science translator at the nonprofit ScienceForWork.
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