Countries Need to Prepare For a Changing Workforce

Automation and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are developing at an ever-increasing rate, and it has lead many people to worry about their future work. Especially in the manufacturing industry, workers are progressively substituted by robots that never get tired and are more precise and efficient.

Many worry about what will happen to millions of workers, how they will provide for their families and how will society adapt?

The majority of economists agree that there isn’t any need to worry. Past major transformations of the workforce and job requirements, especially the Industrial Revolution, didn’t lead to widespread suffering or social upheaval.

“Since the dawn of the industrial age, a recurrent fear has been that technological change will spawn mass unemployment,” wrote Kenneth Rogoff, a professor of economics and public policy at Harvard University and recipient of the 2011 Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics, for the Project Syndicate. “Neoclassical economists predicted that this would not happen, because people would find other jobs, albeit possibly after a long period of painful adjustment. By and large, that prediction has proven to be correct.”

With globalization and automation boosting corporate productivity, people might be worried about being replaced by…