The Economy of Automatic for the People
For a long time, I have been interested in the social and economic ramifications of advances in Artificial Intelligence technology, as it is going to radically change the employment market and is doing so as we speak. The decline of opportunity in many job sectors of the last decade or two isn't because "they are stealing our jobs" - it is because automation means that the jobs are being done by an "it" not a person at all.
I was reading an article that was saying that by 2030, an expected 1.5 million jobs will be lost to automation, especially the jobs that are structured and process based, which is a lot of the administrative work. However, jobs that require interpersonal relationships to effectively perform, will likely survive for some time to come, although even in this area, the AIs are getting to be better communicators, especially since a lot of the interaction is increasingly done digitally, not face to face. I would suspect that many people are starting to interact with chatbots without acknowledging they aren't people.
However, there will be new jobs and the article, although mainstream and basic in my opinion, did give a decent general overview of what could be to come and the potential growth areas, which gives an indication of where people should be focusing their efforts for employment.
The next few years will see an increased demand for workers with more advanced digital skills, including technical specialists with skills in big data, process automation, robotics engineering, blockchain and machine learning, which will offset the more traditional technology roles that can be fully automated.
As you can see, the future jobs are the kinds of jobs that will increasingly make the legacy jobs obsolete and what is interesting is that blockchain is mentioned here, even though blockchain isn't yet mainstream. Crypto isn't mentioned, but the two go hand in hand, especially when considering that there is an expectation that one in three jobs will be in the online gig economy, which will have to be driven by digital currencies for practical reasons, including the rise of automation and the need to reduce transaction costs.
The driving narrative is an echo of the messaging being pushed out by the World Economic Forum's (WEF) "Great Rest" story, being pushed all over the pace, something I wrote about last year and might be worth a read for those interested in the potential of the future of what has been labelled "the fourth industrial revolution", which is the automation of activities.
The unceasing drive toward digital economies is going to create a large opportunity for many people who have been unable to get a foothold into the current economy due to a variety of reasons, to start building. However, it is going to largely require individuals to act for themselves and build skills and relationships, as institutional and government programs will always be lagging somewhat behind the curve. The world economy and employment opportunity is changing so rapidly, traditional education systems will continually fail and those who rely on it, will fall through the widening cracks, creating large financial and social gaps. The divide between the analogue and the digital worker will grow and this will have large social consequences, some of which we are already seeing as manufacturing jobs disappear in.
For a long time, I have considered participating on Hive as a degree program toward future employment, not just an investment vehicle so that work is unnecessary. The most valuable part of the community is the opportunity it delivers to not only learn about what is to come, but develop skills and build relationships to be ahead of the curve as it arrives. All of us here now are already taking part in the digital economy in a way that is currently novel, but will become ubiquitous globally.
Not only this, we are also using the technology and developing the tools and vehicles that will be used to empower the entire digital workforce, from blockchain, to crypto, to Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). Much of the list of Great Reset items suggested by the WEF will benefit from blockchain integration for supply chain management and tokenization for tracking and value distributive purposes, including the payment of salaries for gig workers at a global level.
While people here understand that there is potential in blockchain and crypto, I think that many do not fully understand how large the opportunity is and how much of an impact it is going to have on the world economy. It is not just banking that is going to be disrupted, it is literally every business that currently exists, which means that every bit of economic value in the world today and in the future to come is going to be affected by things we are already doing here daily. More and more services and business models will move into the space, more applications will move on and whether you are buying from Amazon or hiring plumber, blockchain and tokenization are going to be integrated into the process, even if not seen.
A lot of what is going on is the development of the infrastructure that is going to underpin the economy on the back end and as individuals, we will interact with this on the surface through interfaces, in a similar way as we use the millions of databases that form the internet today. We do not dig through the trillions of folders looking for what we are after, we just click and search, and it is surfaced for us. This means that ew can get what we need, without having to work for it, as the process is automated.
Many jobs are being created in automation development for all of our various processes, which ends up costing jobs, but also giving us more time to spend on the things that are more important to us. This is an opportunity in itself, as we will have the chance to spend more time doing what we love, but it isn't going to be possible for everyone to earn on it, which means we are going to have to shift our social and cultural paradigms as to what valuable work is, what it is worth and what happens for those who are unable to take part effectively. The disruption in this is enormous and there is a lot of risk for many people to be left by the wayside to digitally die.
But, this is part of evolution and revolutions always bring in a period of redundancies where while there is employment growth, the skills needed and opportunities available will not be suitable for all. This gives us another opportunity to grow however, as unlike the past, we now have the technology to organize and govern ourselves in new ways and build a society where we can far better attend to each other, if we learn to care about each other. Human relationships matter in this regard and while a lot of people are increasingly moving away from building interpersonal connections, I think that what the technology we are developing will empower is a return to a point where community again matters.
As I have said many times, we have an opportunity here. Up until now, the automation of the world has been in the hands of corporations that are seeking profits at ay cost, groups that do not care about the cost in jobs, as long as it improves their ROI, with the value they generate going back to a narrow sub-section of society. In a decentralized environment of interpersonal relationships however, the value not only gets spread more widely, activity is also tempered by the interconnectedness and interactions of us as humans. This fundamentally changes not only the financial flows of the economy, but the direction in which new development takes.
Economy literally means "household management" and for far too long, we have put it in the hands of faceless corporations and lost the connection to its roots. Now it is time to take responsibility back and build what we must to once again connect it to what is truly valuable. Us.
Taraz [ Gen1: Hive ]
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