The Future of Jobs: How will we adapt to AI?

It's mostly agreed upon that machines can kill jobs. What was once something that was performing easy, simple work for us is now leading to an age where one day, a machine could be invented that replaces you at your workplace. Whether you trade stocks, drive cars, work in a factory, or even write articles, work is being done, or has been done, to replace you with a machine.

But is this a bad thing? Well, it depends.

Improvements in automation are allowing humans to accomplish more while spending less time and effort. In the past, this was universally a positive outcome. Farmers could work more land, then people could produce more and more goods via machines and eventually factories, and jobs became automated at an exponential rate. More people could accomplish more things with less time. This freed us up to pursue other things; like time with our family or to focus on discovering other things in your life. Now, things are going a little too fast. Innovation is still happening and automation is proceeding faster than ever, but now things aren't as positive.

Factory machines became more and more complex, and are easily able to out-compete a team of human factory workers. Computers became more advanced, allowing us to assign once human-only tasks to machines. Contemporary concepts such as "Machine Learning" and improvements in artificial intelligence are allowing machines to perform more and more tasks better than a human, while humans are not able to create enough jobs fast enough to replace those lost.

What will we do when office buildings are massive databases for machines, instead of floors of cubicles? When steering wheels and human drivers are a thing of the past?

Farmers became factory workers, factory workers became service workers, and service workers went to offices. But where will we go?

Three Possible Outcomes

• Cybersecurity/Computer Science

While machines are still able to wreak havoc on a computer system, given the right tools, there still has to be someone to create those tools. When a certain method of decryption becomes obsolete, someone will need to discover a new one . With blockchain technology and cryptocurrency becoming more and more popular and accepted by the public, hackers will find tampering with data more and more difficult. Their methods, which they've passed onto their machines, may no longer be effective. Humans will have to develop new ways to break through security, or to improve it to prevent this from happening. A machine cannot develop versions that are physically better than themselves if they are unable to discover a new design method on their own, or do the research themselves.

For the foreseeable future, humans will need to be around to protect data, and develop the machines and tools capable of doing so.

• Science

Speaking of research, let's talk about machine learning.

www.sas.com defines machine learning as "a method of data analysis that automates analytical model building. It is a branch of artificial intelligence based on the idea that systems can learn from data, identify patterns and make decisions with minimal human intervention." While a machine with the proper learning algorithm could learn and perform a task much faster and more efficiently than a human, they require data in a database on the task in order to do so. Humans will still need to discover new data to create said databases and allow machines to learn about truly new concepts. Perhaps we will see a new age where every student dreams of becoming a scientist, and of propelling mankind forward.

• Art

People are shockingly good at being creative. Art has been around since the dawn of mankind, and the improvement of our tools has allowed us only to get better. A machine may be good at designing say, a logo or title screen, but can a machine make a truly historic art piece? Can a robot write a genre-defining song? Can a robot make a bestselling video game?

A Dark Future? Maybe not.

A very optimistic prediction, perhaps naively so, but think about it. What would it be like if we didn't see people forced to work in jobs they hated, but to truly pursue what they desire? While automation and AI can make that seem impossible, perhaps they could help us achieve it. Maybe one day, our economy and society could evolve in such a way that machines can do all labors. Some people may understandably be horrified at that statement. What will happen when machines have all the jobs?

It's easy, and honestly forgivable, to think this future is a dark one, where poverty is rampant and a powerful few control the wealth.

What if that simply wasn't the case?

Perhaps we could see this benefit for what it is, and wealth as a means to survive will be a thing of the past. If we're lucky and play our cards right, this could provide a floor for mankind to only move upward, making the concept of working to stay alive a thing of the past. We could do what we wanted, whether that meant creating art and entertaining, or providing for others in our own way. Machines would do all the things we needed to allow society to exist in such a way.

Does this seem like it will happen in the near future? Well, no. Your iPhone sadly will not become the very brickwork of a labor-less society. This prediction, if at all accurate, would occur many decades from now, at the very least.

That being said, at least there will still be some jobs for us to do, and many more in the near future.

We will still need to go to work, but more importantly, we will need to do all in our power to ensure that this bright future remains that way. We must lay the groundwork to ensure the improvement of the lives of all of those around us. We must inspire kindness and generosity in a world that can seem cruel and greedy at times.

Maybe one day, having a machine take your job could be the best thing that happened to you.