Watch out… the machines are coming!
Through history, humanity faced many challenges, and it always had two choices vanish or adapt. So far the adaptation option was the chosen one. As humanity used its intellectual gift to overcome the challenges. But, there is a new form of challenge that no one knows how to deal with, ironically it is a human creation: Machine learning.
Many scientists predict that doesn’t matter what kind of job you are doing; it will be replaced. From taxi drivers to doctors, all will be replaced by faster, accurate, and safer machines, and this will happen quicker than we can imagine.
In next 15 years, machines will take over 38% of the jobs in the US alone. According to Forrester, 25 million jobs will disappear over the next ten years.
That is not the first time that we are facing this kind of mass job losses. During the first and the second industrial revolution, where robots took over repetitive tasks and muscle demanding jobs, many people lost their jobs. For instance, from 1870 to 1970 the percentage of American farmers fell by 90%, and from 1950 to 2010 the percentage of Americans workers in factories fell by 75 % all this because of the industrial revolution wave.
But at least the change back then was not that fast, as we had over 100 years to adapt and adjust the job market, by creating new jobs and opportunities. Now, we have only 10 to 15 years to adjust to the machine learning tsunami, and the bad news is that those machines will replace the human intellectual gift, in other words, they will basically replace us.
Well, it looks like the machine learning revolution is inevitable, and we need to embrace it and steer it to our advantage. For that, we need to define a clear line between what human and AI will and will not do. We are more superior in deductive reasoning, emotional intelligence, and social intelligence, as we use those skills at different levels in different situations to find solutions and make decisions. Machines are accurate and faster; they can process an immense amount of data and propose options; they get neither distracted or tired. By establishing those skills between them and us, we can create a cooperative environment where human and machines can reach a complementary coexistence.
The coexistence can succeed very well, but under one single condition, which is the willingness and the determination of our political leaders, to not throw the market into the hands of the greedy capitalists. Politicians should prevent the cannibalism and savage job market; they need to adapt the education system and society rules to the technological advance disruption, enhance the level of human participation in the economy by offering better education and accompaniment for those who are already in the market job. The machines should be under the control and supervision of human and not enslave human to the machines.
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