Are smart machines and systems affecting the job market?
Not only does the fast-paced growth of smart systems and machines affect the job market, but it has the ability to transform it overnight. I am referring specifically to technological unemployment.
Technological unemployment was first recorded during the industrial revolution. It was the first time that machines replaced humans and technological unemployment became a massive phenomenon.
Today, we are facing the same issue, but it has become even bulkier. It is however hard to perceive its importance, because human lives are merged and coexist with machines. Machines are in fact very rapidly replacing what human beings can do. It is no longer a matter of machines simply doing manual work, such as the work of a farmer. Machines are now replacing human thought.
The typist and the draughtsman are both examples of jobs that have long been replaced. We are now facing the replacement of the teacher or even that of the theoretical mathematician.
The most important competitive advantage smart machines have against humans is the fact that they can reinvent themselves. This happens at computational speeds that are inconceivable to the human mind.
The question is: how will the future evolve for young people in the job market, when banking devices will replace the employees in a bank, when computers will deliver lessons that are now taught by teachers, when all of us will find ourselves jobless because of smart machines?
The answer is clear. At the αriston project we believe that there is a competitive advantage no smart machine can ever replace: the creation of authentic content. We should therefore focus our attention on helping children develop what we call individual entrepreneurship.
By individual entrepreneurship we mean resourcefulness, inspiration and artistic thought in every academic discipline. It is found where humans are learning new techniques, philosophy, the art of thinking and how to create new content. We believe that humans and machines will coexist in harmony in the near future, with machines producing content generated by humans.
(Extract from the radio course by Yannis Stergis, President & CEO hyphen SA, for the radio show protifora ariston project.)
