How Boeing, Toyota, Caterpillar, and other OEMs can double their current net profit by using smart contracts to become unmanned “virtual companies”, with or without cryptocurrency: Part 2
Why is this actually a good thing for humans?
“Companies that, once started, can run themselves [without humans]” is just a theoretical ideal. The messy practical realities of real life will never let us get there. OEMs will only be able to automate 70–75% of their current workforces (while other industries may manage over 95%). In fact, even blue collar workers will never be 100% eliminated (more on this in part 3).
Still, even 70–95% is a lot of disrupted lives. This all seems very dystopian. How could it work out for the better in the long run? How could such a future turn out to be pro-human?
As Lyndon Baines Johnson once eloquently asked:
“Is our world gone? We say farewell. Is a new world coming? We welcome it, and we will bend it to the hopes of man”
How will we bend this revolution to the hopes of man?
I’ve established that the future will have a lot of hyper-efficient OEMs. In a world where everyone is hyper-efficient, product differentiation becomes even more important. Its relative importance compared to everything else will be far greater in the future than it is now. In a hyper-efficient world, how else do you stand out to customers and get an advantage over your competitors?
In other words, job positions that interface with technology innovation, product development, and/or the customer experience will become exponentially more in-demand. They will be the vital lifeblood of any company (OEM or otherwise).
The money that companies saved by automating 95% of their present-day workforces will get reallocated into talent that will empower them to better differentiate their products & services. UI/UX, human centered design, industrial design, engineering, marketing, technical sales, R&D, etc. jobs will see a massive boom. The long-term outlook is a Cambrian explosion of new jobs.
After all, there is no way for machines to truly be content-creators. There is too much critical thinking and creativity involved. Moreover, it requires genuine passion and emotional intelligence.
A good marketer or salesperson isn’t just selling you a product. He or she is selling you a feeling. Oftentimes it’s something along the lines of “That could be you….”. A GoPro salesman isn’t just talking to you about the technical features of their camera. He’s showing you a cool YouTube video of what could be. Teasing you with unrealized potential and unactualized opportunity: “If only you forked over $400 for our camera, then that could be you. You could be that adventurous”.
As Don Draper says “You are the product. You feeling something. That’s what sells”. Valentino Rossi says something very similar: “Riding a race bike is an art — a thing that you do because you feel something inside”.
In the future, a mechanical design engineer might use AI-enhanced variants of aPriori and OptiStruct as tools. But a “narrowly defined pattern recognition algorithm chugger on steroids” will never be able to replace all the critical thinking that goes into mechanical engineering in a cost effective, professionally ethical, and structurally-sound manner.
And even if it could, the AI would never be able to design a motorcycle that the rider would truly emotionally connect with.
I conclude with quotes from Jack Ma, CEO of Alibaba, and Bozoma Saint John, former Chief Brand Officer of Uber:
“It’s a human story because tech is not just tech”-Bozoma Saint John (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6lXD07k3vk&feature=youtu.be)
“Computers will never have mastery over wisdom or love; giving humans a perpetual advantage”-Jack Ma
Business isn’t just about efficiency. There’s so much more to it than getting from point A to point B. Business is the story of how we move around ideas, services, information, physical goods, money, and people in a way that is consistent with our personal, communal, tribal, cultural, and national values. Machines will never know what those values are. They will never be able to empathize with our deepest hopes and dreams. Products and services designed by AI will never truly allow us to “feel something” the way Don Draper and Valentino Rossi describe and would therefore turn out to be sales flops.
Unmanned “virtual companies” will only make product and service differentiation more competitive than ever before and force companies to reward human content-creators.
In the long run, there will be way more fun jobs for humans. Jobs requiring passion and creativity.
The present-day white-collar office couldn’t be further away from the words “passion” and “creativity”. Cubicle life is universally regarded as Sisyphian. Comic #453 from Gojko Franulic hits the nail on the head:
Why does it have to be like that? Most jobs on this earth tie back to mundane, repetitive operations in some way. “White collar manual labor” is definitely a real thing. Most jobs on this earth boil down to “keeping the trains running”.
After all, there’s no way around it. Companies wouldn’t even be functional or profitable if everyone ditched operations for the sake of passion and creativity. Unless smart contracts picked up the slack!
By letting smart contracts take over manual, repetitive operations tasks, companies will free their human employees to spend their time on higher value-add activities.
“By automating transactions, B2B companies will have more time to focus on other facets of their business, such as marketing, innovation and customer experience. Transactions are at the core of what B2B companies do, but by utilizing smart contracts they will be able to use finite resources to better the products or services they offer.”-Larry Myler, Forbes contributor and B2B sales expert
To summarize, work would be much more enjoyable in this brave new world. The 19th and 20th centuries spent a lot of time trying to mold human employees into machines. But humans aren’t dull machines. Nor should they be treated as such. Nobody wants to be Sisyphus, or Boxer from Animal Farm. Let us spend the 21st century allowing human employees to fully embrace their humanity and prospering beyond our wildest fantasies in doing so.
Finally, it’s worth noting that smart contracts won’t just empower large global companies (which I’ve primarily been describing so far). It will also empower entrepreneurs and SMEs (small-medium enterprises).
Today, it is rather difficult for a single person or small team to tackle truly complex business models. They simply don’t have the manpower to provide the needed operations, accounting, and invoicing muscle. With smart contracts, the robot accountants completely level the playing field and allow small enterprises to tackle business models of nearly any complexity.
Continue to part 3….