Good news! Automation capable of erasing white collar jobs is coming, but not for a decade or more. And that’s also the bad news because interest in automation accelerates during economic downturns, so once tech that can take your job arrives you’ll already have lived through another period of economic turmoil that may already have cost you your job.
That lovely scenario was advanced yesterday by professor Mirko Draca of The London School of Economics, who yesterday told Huawei’s 2018 Asia-Pacific Innovation Day 2018 that the world is currently in “an era of investment and experimentation” with technology. The effects of such eras, he said, generally emerge ten to fifteen years in the future.
Innovation in the 1980s therefore sparked the PC and internet booms of the mid-to-late 1990s, and we’re still surfing [SIC - suffering?] the changes they unleashed. “Our current era of mobile tech doesn’t measure up to the radical 1990s,” he said, as shown by the fact that productivity gains appear to have stalled for a decade or more.
[...] “We predict that AI and robotics will lead to some sort of productivity surge in ten to fifteen years,” he said, adding that there is “no clear evidence” that a new wave of technologies that threaten jobs has started.
But he also said that it will once businesses see the need to control costs.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 13 2018, @12:16PM
And yet we still have the choice to not spend those huge sums of money.
Sorry, borrowing that much money remains the huge irresponsibility here. I find it remarkable that you spin this story as being better than not going to college at all. In the latter case, however, the person has been earning money for something like 11 years (most of it at the same or higher rate than they were earning as a college graduate!) and doesn't have 108k debt at the end of that period. And then in the college graduate case, they've been goofing around for five years in the "underemployed" position. Sure, they might still be underemployed at the end of it, but that's a long time to not attempt to better their situation.
No, but let's keep in mind that most recessions don't have a screwy job recovery like that. If we're going to have nasty recessions like that every 7 years for the foreseeable future, then very few people are going to do well. I suggest we don't do that as a society - I would suggest focusing on new business creation and business growth among small and mid-level businesses. That will help our college grad. Personal responsibility will help as I've noted in other threads.
Even in a situation like that of the last decade, one can improve their lot. It's just somewhat harder.