Job Terminator: Rise of the Machines
What is one of the most valuable assets given to you and I? Something that is priceless, yet we show our heedless nature towards it. It cannot be touched, yet it has the ability to keep moving forward. We try having enough of it, however, we always find that we’re running short. It has no materialistic value, yet we spend and also try to save this currency at every moment of our lives. This very asset is time. And as many of us would say, “time is money”.
In this predominant capitalistic world, many industrialists and entrepreneurs live by the maxim “time is money”. Industrialists that are upholding the value of time are seen as something splendid by many, little to realize that this could be a leading factor towards economic disruption. At this point, you might be a little confused as to how is it that industrialists who value their companies’ time cause such disruptions. Don’t worry I’m about to simplify your puzzlement.
"People are more difficult to work with than machines. And when you break a person, he can’t be fixed."
In the world, we have multi-national corporations, enterprises, businesses, consortiums, conglomerates…and the list goes on. These entities primarily have one motive, which is, improving their growth by expanding their profits and minimizing their costs. Respectfully so, almost every business should minimally function by this model. There isn’t anything wrong with that. Except there is one complication where these establishments are reducing their costs by rapidly migrating to the recently-emerged, fourth industrial revolution developments of artificial intelligence (AI).
You might be asking, so what does this have to do with the valuable asset of time that I made mention of in the opening of this article? It’s rather simple. As many of us are already aware of, organisations are migrating to these cool technological machines (which comprises of artificial intelligence) to carry out various types of labour which were formerly and solely done by humans. These machines can carry out tasks:
- at much faster speeds. (Saves time);
- for a full 24-hour day. (Making full use of time); and
- with super accuracy. (Neutralizing mistakes which humans make, therefore saving even more time and producing extensive end-user satisfaction).
As a company, this is fantastic news. Limited expenses, customer satisfaction, greater returns, higher investments and so forth. I mean what more could a company ask for, right?
From a company’s perspective, all is great. However, you and I, the working middle-class citizen, the employed, the labour-force, whatever they call us, in the most blatant terms, we might be screwed. The question that should strike your mind is that if our labour-force is being rapidly replaced by machines and artificial intelligence (in the super-close future), what labour is it that you and I are going to do? What is going to be our means of income? Would artificial intelligence pave way for new types of jobs?
Let us know what your thoughts are on AI and its prospective repercussions by simply dropping a comment below. Be sure to like and subscribe. Stay tuned for the next article where we’ll dive into specific jobs that are on the verge of being replaced by machines.
