In a world driven by Artificial Intelligence, where’s your Job?

In an interview with Quartz, Bill Gates said: “If a robot comes in to do the same thing [the same things that humans do], you’d think that we’d tax the robot at a similar level.” “I don’t think the robot companies are going to be outraged that there might be a tax. It’s OK,” he added. As much as surprising it sounds for now, these statements talk about our future that is about to collapse soon, thanks to AI.

We’re not 50 or 100 years away from this major happening when unemployment will dominate on one side and A.I. on another, but rather we have reached that mark to hint that 38% jobs of existing US jobs would be lost to automation by 2030, following the research by PwC. Another report claims as said by experts that four out of 10 jobs globally would be taken over by machines by 2021, and of these, one in every 4 will be from India.

Elon Musk has already backed an early stage startup, Neuralink to keep the pace of humans right with AI as he is of the opinion that humans will likely become second class citizens (or slaves, or something even worse) when AI will start dominating. Stephen Hawking once quoted that “the development of artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race”.

This paradigm movement surely asks every professional to question himself or herself, what are they going to do when this state actually occurs? It is already 2017 and another new year’s resolution is just another month away, it’s the time we sit back and think about our future seriously. It is the time to ensure. To analyse. To realise. And to assure!

You can’t dismiss the fact that the change is bound to happen. This massive shift could be labelled as the Industrial Revolution, or Industry 4.0 where humans will assist robots, and companies will require lesser human input. It is the time we make sure that whatever be the transformation will be, how opportunate or how damaging to us, our job isn’t going to be stolen by that robot which human manufactured. And even if it takes away our ongoing job, we make sure that we are going to apply (and eligible) for another job the very next day.

Basically, the aim is to not sit unemployed back at home (nobody likes it), look at the robots working and envy them.

Those who have no idea about what adaptability is will suffer the most. Mark it. We need to fuel the skills and fill the gaps. For an instance, the transformation that is happening in the HR space that AI-powered recruitment assistants have started streamlining the process while letting low-skilled HR professionals learn and perform that how an applicant should be dealt with.

Professionals need to move ahead along with time, they have to learn more irrespective of their education and what job they are up to; they have to be creative at large as well; every field is about to be disrupted, from manufacturing industries to banking sectors, even front office jobs when a company won’t have a job opening for a receptionist.

They need to build their portfolio looking back at their education and work experience as well, for example, if one is a digital marketer, he or she can look out for an online course like on Coursera in business consulting in the spare time while keeping the track of developments in digital marketing space.

Virtual workforce & collaborations are more likely to grow at a fast pace and the change in culture is bound to occur in next 3-5 years, here for example, business consulting expertise will help you earn more to keep the pace with your lifestyle while performing tasks of digital marketing at the office. To highlight here, learning should never go out of the list, even if you add up “expert” after your designation, AI pushes us back to where we have started, that’s what we should not forget.

The way Amazon Go has fascinated all of us, it’s a disaster for the human workforce as it is planning to rely heavily on robotic automation and software reducing the need of human labour to up to 10 people per shift at a location and may only require just three humans as workforce. The tasks are going to be performed as usual but a) it will be performed by robots b) more efficient and faster.

This is one example as Amazon Go stores have started facing troubles when dealing with more than 20 customers at a time but technology has its own way to settle, and I believe it will settle when we will rush into the stores interacting with robots and buying the same goods that we used to buy earlier while interacting with humans.

This brings to another note that we have to be ready for the robot-only future, just like Tesla, Uber, Google and many more companies are leaving no stone unturned for the driverless future. We need to figure out the human potential and calibre to deal with the happenings around to stay updated and get along with time in order to learn more about the opportunities that AI will create regardless of human brain keeps up the pace with machines or not.

Banks are on the move to heavily rely on AI, be it chatbots, to interact with their customers and enhance the customer experience. And for people seeking jobs, there is another bad news for them, chatbots have started generating revenue and the revenues are on the upswing and it would continue to grow which is quite inevitable.

These chatbots are being operated in the departments of sales, customer support, security, commodity, finance etc etc; ‘relying on chatbots in customer support department’ being the centre of attraction for the firms as well as revenues as believed and getting implemented, chatbots will continue to cut down the labour costs more significantly.

We have to admit here, everything can not be done alone by a professional, governments and organisations need to be proactive here to make their employees learn tech skills and introduce several programs to help them keeping up ahead of their time. We have to be prepared sure shot for extreme ways of learning and enrolling in different curriculums even if it requires us to be a multitasker.

Managers need to get out of their cabin to look at the future and their staff to make sure they never miss out employee engagement between humans, because managers surely won’t like finding expressions on the face of robots.

While technology evolves with human’s efforts, the evolution of human beings, from left to right, circles around learning. Our single point program should be developed around awareness from every bit of little to the most of the maximum. Otherwise, no one would be able to save most of the human workforce from getting unemployed and having them way far behind the age of AI.

As Bill Gates proposed, the robots that come to the workspace after stealing human jobs should pay the taxes, those taxes would not be sufficient alone to serve the mankind their purpose, existence and survival. It is, us, who are going to decide the fate of humanity and for that matter, we need to grow, process and evolve with everything else, be it our skills related to machine learning, internet of things, big data or AI, or qualities related to productivity, self-improvement or leadership.

There will be “tremendous” opportunities for sure, and people will make money, no doubt about that. But before everything else, will we be skilled enough to race against AI, remain stuck at our jobs and dominant with our skill set in the industry? The time is now to make sure your future answers it well.

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Hey, there? This article has been picked to be republished with slight edits under the ‘Best of TNT’ series. It is a step further for the content to be contagious to make it counted yet again and for the ones who missed it!