Big Ideas: The Future Of Work
A week ago Thursday was the first installment of our Big Idea series that we are hosting in Chicago to discuss Big Ideas- topics that we normally don’t have an opportunity to discuss on a daily basis. We gathered some of the smartest, most creative people that we know to talk about the future of technology and the impact of technology on society. The intention of the series is to take a step aside from our normal lives and discuss larger, more futuristic topics that could spark new creative endeavors or merely allow us to apply a new perspective to our lives.
For our first installment we discussed The Future of Work — How automation, self-driving cars, and robots will affect jobs in the future, and what the future might look like if we’ve automated all of the jobs away.
Overall, the event was a huge success- turnout was great, conversation was engaging, and attendees drove the conversations in multiple unexpected directions. We’re excited to take the learnings from this event and to apply them to the next event that we host!
See below for a quick introduction to the topic and some additional
The Future of Work
The Obama White House released a report in December of 2016 stating that the effect of Artificial Intelligence and automation is “threaten[ing] jobs over the next decade or two range from 9 to 47 percent” and that “83 percent of the jobs where people make less than $20 per hour will be subject to automation or replacement”. As technologists, we are actively developing the technologies that threaten other people’s jobs and livelihoods and potentially increasing inequality by automating lower-wage work away. On the other hand, the technologies that we develop could provide for increased safety (self-driving cars), improvement in the quality of jobs, and the possibility of increased leisure time for all workers. Below is a short presentation with some video clips going further into depth about these different subjects
Recommended Learning
If you’re interested in the subject The Future of Work, here s some additional articles/videos that dive a bit more into the details.
- Humans Need Not Apply — a great intro video on Youtube
- Quartz — Silicon valley is right, our jobs are already disappearing
- TED Talk — What will future jobs look like?
- TEDx — How the future of work is not Jobs
- Book — Rise of the Robots
- A Warning from Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Stephen Hawking
What we learned
We will never be able to predict the future. The intention of our series is not to predict what the future will bring, but to imagine what some of those possible futures will be. Many of us are optimistic about the future, but as we build a society so dependent on technology it becomes more and more difficult to disconnect from that technology. It’s important for us to start having these conversations now so that as the technology advances we’re better prepared for what the future brings.
