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The Future of Work Is Uncertain, Schools Should Worry Now

posted by mrpg on Thursday December 14 2017, @11:20PM   Printer-friendly
from the robot-scare-fad dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

Weep for the future?

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...

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 16 2017, @04:31PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday December 16 2017, @04:31PM (#610720) Journal

    Other parts of our government have been made aware of this problem and it seems are actually doing something about it.

    That's not their job to control a sitting president. It's your job. Autonomy of the shadowy bits of government are far more likely to work against you than for you. Becoming ruled by the parts of government that are not accountable to you is not an improvement. They can start wars as well (and probably have started a number of them since the end of the Second World War).

    Putin strikes me as steadier and smarter than Trump. He's been in power for near 20 years now and has not turned to the nukes. As to the fighting in the Ukraine, the mainstream media takes a simplistic view that Putin's Russia is the evil aggressor, but other information paints a much murkier picture.

    Funny how you just had to say that about the Ukraine. The picture isn't "murkier". Russia wanted its sea port at Sevastopol so it took the Crimea. Evil aggressor status confirmed. As usual with this crap, people give actual warmongers a free pass. Unfortunately, that doesn't make Trump want to start a distracting war any less, does it?