It is not a question of “if,” but one of “when,” advancing technologies result in significant unemployment. So, the inevitable question is, “What will the over 10 billion of us be doing?” if the bulk of the work is automated or done by machines? The answers you get range from, “Well, I have been hearing about this for a long time; nothing will change” to, at the other extreme, “utter chaos and a nightmare.”
It is undeniable that the pace of automation around us is increasing rapidly, from simple things like Alexa and Siri responding to voice commands, Google completing our email sentences, and Chrome feeding us ads ‘hearing’ a conversation with a friend… to complicated things like apps reading MRIs and scans to perform disease diagnosis better than the best experts. Arguments over the timing, ethics, and extent of automation aside, it is only logical that this acceleration will result in the loss of jobs.
The way the world can respond to this possible increase in unemployment is by:
- Ensuring that we train the population in skills that will be relevant in the future
- Providing some type of universal basic income to all citizens to ensure that people have livelihoods
- Enabling mechanisms for self-employment and on-demand employment. Increased focus on services in the arts, culture, and entertainment
With the above, some profound questions become relevant:
- “Who” does the work? Are they an employee or a freelancer?
- Why does someone do the work? Is it because they want to earn a living or simply for self-actualization?
- “From where” is the work done? a physical office or somewhere in a different part of the world,
- “How” is the work integrated when it comes from different freelance experts or a combination of freelancers and employees?
- “Who” identifies and helps develop skills for the future in the wider population?
With COVID-19 and the associated lockdowns, the business world was challenged with some of the questions above. Businesses responded to Q #3 by embracing work from home. Ubiquitous high-speed broadband, supported by an explosion of video communication apps, allowed remote work to be relatively successful. This success has led businesses to ask Q#1, and why do they need people working from anywhere as full-time employees?
In addition, business disruption driven by COVID has aggravated income disparities. Large online platform companies are growing exponentially at the cost of small and medium businesses. Income gaps between the rich and poor are widening at an increasing pace. Even disparities in vaccine administration among counties are highlighting this divergence. This is just the beginning, and the global ecosystem will have to devise holistic solutions for the future.
For our part, we at i2i, as a responsible business, want to create ethical and social value in addition to material and economic value. This essence is strongly captured in our tagline, “Distributing the Future Evenly’ and our values of diversity and empathy. Further, we incorporate the following into our operating and business models:
- Empowering talent in smaller towns, investing in future skills development, and creating employment opportunities in small towns themselves
- Collaborating with educational and skilling institutions in smaller towns to help update their curriculum and direct them towards future skills
- Operate our company as a professional network rather than one with static hierarchies
4.Investing in platform for skills mapping, tracking, and development
- Developing platforms that help self-employed skilled talent offer services in an on-demand fashion
These tenets help us contribute towards developing a resilient and equitable world.