Date: 2024-12-26 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00017422
Ideas
Andrew Yang
Automation Will Dramatically Change The Workforce. Andrew Yang Has A Plan To Bridge The Gap
Peter Burgess
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Date: 2024-12-26 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00017422 | |||||||||
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Burgess COMMENTARY Peter Burgess | |||||||||
| Automation Will Dramatically Change The Workforce. Andrew Yang Has A Plan To Bridge The Gap QuoraContributor Consumer Tech uncaptioned GETTY How will automation and AI change the workforce in the future, and what can we do to prepare for it? originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. Answer by Andrew Yang, US Presidential Candidate 2020 (D) & Entrepreneur, on Quora: I wrote a book about this so if you’re really interested in this please do check it out. Another great resource is Rise of the Robots by Martin Ford. Whatever I say here won’t do this question justice. Bain, McKinsey, and the Obama administration all agree that automation and AI are going to have a huge impact on the American workforce. Some estimates place the number of American jobs subject to automation above thirty percent. The top jobs in the US – retail, food service, administrative, transportation including truck driving, and manufacturing – are all subject to automation. We’re heading for a crisis as the AI call center software comes online and the trucks start driving themselves. The Fed classifies about 40% of jobs as either repetitive manual or repetitive cognitive, and thus potentially subject to automation. The more resilient categories are non-repetitive manual work (e.g., hairdressers, house cleaners) or non-repetitive cognitive work (e.g., designers, coders). We need to evolve our economy to the next stage of capitalism as quickly as possible. Many of our current problems come from the fact that we’re measuring the wrong things. We use the stock market, GDP, and unemployment to determine the health of our country, but they don’t measure what matters. GDP and the stock market are at record highs, but so are suicide rates, drug overdoses and stress levels. Our life expectancy has gone down for the past three years, unheard of in a developed nation. So we need to adapt our measurements to include metrics that actually matter to us. Things like environmental quality, childhood success rates, mental health, freedom from substance abuse and health-adjusted life expectancy. If we measure these instead of GDP, we’ll focus our efforts on improving our lives, not the stock portfolio of the small portion of Americans who own stocks. We also need to fundamentally change how we view work and value in this country. My wife is currently at home with our two children, one of whom is autistic. What does GDP value her work at? $0, and we know that’s the opposite of how it should be. She’s doing some of the hardest and most important work out there. We need to recognize all the uncompensated work and caregiving that goes on in this country, especially that done by women who do the majority of uncompensated work. Finally, we need to implement the Freedom Dividend, a universal basic income of $1,000/mo. This would allow people to transition through this difficult time. It would allow people to move for an opportunity, or give people breathing room to start a business. It would supercharge local economies, as everyone would have more money to spend at bakeries, tutoring for their kids, car repairs, or the occasional night out. And it will allow people to leave abusive jobs or relationships. The thing that struck me when researching for my book is how we are already in the midst of the fourth industrial revolution – and it is already wreaking havoc on communities around the country. AI and automation have the potential to make our lives easier, but they will also displace millions of American jobs and have been doing so for years. We are not prepared in the least. It is one of the biggest challenges of our era. We need to come together to enact big solutions to make a more human-centered economy so we can successfully transition through the fastest economic and technological advancements in history. There is an opportunity here to build an economy and society that more accurately reflects our goals and values. But it’s going to take a lot of us waking up and rising to the challenge. This question originally appeared on Quora – the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. You can follow Quora on Twitter and Facebook. More questions: Politics of the United States of America: What do you think of the two-party system? Government Debt: What is your plan to get government debt under control? Presidents: What are your major qualifications to be a president? Get the best of Forbes to your inbox with the latest insights from experts across the globe. | |||||||||