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Today's 6th graders will hit their prime working years in 2030.
By that time, the "robot apocalypse" could be fully upon us. Automation and artificial intelligence could have eliminated half the jobs in the United States economy.
Or, plenty of jobs could still exist, but today's students could be locked in a fierce competition for a few richly rewarded positions requiring advanced technical and interpersonal skills. Robots and algorithms would take care of what used to be solid working- and middle-class jobs. And the kids who didn't get that cutting-edge computer science course or life-changing middle school project? They'd be relegated to a series of dead-end positions, serving the elites who did.
Alternatively, maybe Bill Gates and Elon Musk and the other big names ringing the alarm are wrong. A decade from now, perhaps companies will still complain they can't find employees who can read an instruction manual and pass a drug test. Maybe workers will still be able to hold on to the American Dream, so long as they can adjust to incremental technological shifts in the workplace.
Which vision will prove correct?
30 years into the Information Revolution and schools are only just now realizing they should teach kids how to code...
(Score: 2, Troll) by crafoo on Friday December 15 2017, @12:08AM (1 child)
Predicting and impending employment apocalypse? Better keep importing low-skill labor that doesn't want to integrate into the existing culture.
Ironically, "coding" is far from a protected field. Specifying what task needs to get done and what datasets need to be operated on will be possible from people in every field, untrained in "computer science". AI systems will work out the rest of the mundane details.
The only question left to answer is why the arbitrary and odd push for "everyone has to code" in classrooms? Strange.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday December 15 2017, @01:24PM
> Specifying what task needs to get done and what datasets need to be operated on will be possible from people in every field
Ever seen someone design a database who doesn't know what they are doing? Someone untrained in concepts like "many-to-one", "one-to-many", "array", "set", "hash table", etc etc? This is what computer science (should) teach folks. I agree some of the rest is just syntax. Optimisation is probably hard to do automagically without very good ability to drive optimisation routines (which requires coding for foreseeable future).