On July 15, 'Iron Man' Musk stated during a speech at the National Governors Association in the United States that automation technology will inevitably have a transformative impact on the job market. This is because robots in the future will have the ability to do anything humans do, and do it better than humans.
In this, the focus of attention of various U.S. states has been mobilized and elevated, because if this is truly the case, compared to low-priced goods imported from developing countries, the impact of automation on the job market will be more direct and inevitable, directly impacting the electoral strongholds of these politicians.
Mark P. Mills, a professor at Northwestern University and the UAE Institute, recently published an article in City Journal, stating that the future of automation technology replacing professional white-collar jobs will come faster than expected.
Creation and destruction are sweeping through the city center
The unspeakable secret of automation technology is that developing a robot to replace a junior lawyer is easier than replacing an electrician over and over again. This fact also helps explain why economists and politicians are troubled by 'creative destruction,' even though not long ago, they believed it was more beneficial than harmful to society (Editor's note): innovation can continuously reform the economic structure from within, constantly breaking old orders and structures while simultaneously creating new ones, thereby driving economic growth. This process is often referred to as 'creative destruction.' They argue that technology and automation increase productivity and create more jobs.
When the era of automated algorithms arrived, they were no longer so confident. But this is not surprising:
Creating seat-reducing factories and farms, instead, swept through city centers, snatching white-collar jobs. For years, the white-collar community has been debating the 'end of work,' but there is no doubt that the future many feared has already come true.
Automation: A Superficial Novelty and a Profound Revolution
Most media attention focuses on the gradual replacement of manual labor — tangible robots doing things in front of people are far more eye-catching than the invisible "robots" of services on cloud platforms. But focusing on humanoid robots flipping burger patties in fast-food restaurants is misleading. The real revolution is happening elsewhere.
Moreover, automation cannot explain the shrinking of heavy industry jobs either: investment in information technology within manufacturing has remained very low for the past decade or more. Meanwhile, productivity—the key indicator and ultimate goal of automation—has also shown no significant increase. In fact, manufacturing is under-invested in technology.
But Silicon Valley has been dedicated to creating revolutionary software customized for shopping malls, Hollywood, hotels, transportation, newspapers, television, finance, and even the education industry. Nowadays, some algorithmic software in elementary schools teaches math better than humans with a bachelor’s degree in education. Currently, the bulk reading of large numbers of documents by officials and regulators is also gradually being handed over to algorithmic processing.
White-collar workers trying to make a living in this vast service industry will be horrified to find that they have no way out in the workplace.
The penetration of automation across industries is still in its early stages.
Zooming out further, we find that innovation in the automation industry's structure far exceeds expectations: among nearly 200 "unicorn" companies — like Uber, valued at over $10 billion, where venture capital tends to favor startups — 90% belong to the service sector.
When hardware is involved, the challenges multiply accordingly, and the complexity increases dramatically. A minor glitch might cause a video to stutter in software, but if it occurs in a machine's operating system, the consequences can be extremely severe.
Regardless of the hype around autonomous vehicles, much work remains to be done in areas such as smart sensors, [control systems?], powertrains, and ensuring safety and security. A Goldman Sachs report points out that the automotive industry is still largely digitized but only a deeply automated manufacturing industry; in other sectors, the adoption rate of automation is still between 20% and 30%.
There will be growing pains, and they are destined to affect white-collar professionals and corporate management. Blue-collar workers who lost their jobs during the wave of the information age took to the streets in protest, their voices loud. This time, facing the wave of automation, it will be the white-collar workers who are wailing.
