Age of Machines – What Israel can do to stay competitive on the verge of technology workforce change.

Think about the last time you went into a parking lot. Chances are you took a ticket at the entrance (or the pango automatically registered you), and you paid by credit card checkout. Two or three years ago at the same spot in the parking lot stood pavilion, and in it sat a man, usually a kindly old man, who took money from you. Where is this man?

The cruel answer is that he was fired by a machine. It's true that automatic collection machines existed ten years ago, but until recently they were too expensive. The market waited patiently until the production technology of the collection machinery became cheaper and more efficient. In the meantime, other technologies have been born, such as simple and efficient security cameras, and cameras that can read car number plates. Once the package has become cheaper than minimum wage workers, the pavilion is closed and the parking lot worker is sent home.

Technology has always been the main and most influential factor in employment. It was true when the engine was invented, it was true when the computer was invented, it's even truer today. Which currently prevents hundreds of thousands of Israeli workers from joining these groups A man who has disappeared from the pavilion is constantly pressing salaries downwards (in order to postpone the moment when it will be more profitable to bring machines to replace workers) and the artificial influx of the Israeli public sector .

These are the wrong ways to stop the rise of machines, and in the long term they will only cause damage. On the other hand, if Israel manages the entry into the machine age, there is a tremendous opportunity to create hundreds of thousands of high-paying jobs. Instead of people being fired by machines, they will work alongside them and earn more. We have such a plan. She's ambitious, practical, and she'll work. Unfortunately, we seem to be the only political body dealing with this issue. The government is so preoccupied with its own power that no one is doing anything against the global revolution marching in our direction. If the State of Israel continues to do nothing, there will be nothing.  

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The process in which machines replace humans is not new, of course. It began with the first industrial revolution, in the 19th century, when the machine replaced man's muscles. In the current revolution, based on artificial intelligence, machines replace the human brain. All this is not happening in the future, but already. If it took 20 years for the labor market to change, today it is doing it in 20 months, and the pace is only accelerating. We are currently in the midst of the so-called "fourth industrial revolution" (the second was roundly synagogue assembly-line, third - invention of the computer). This is the revolution of robots, artificial-intelligence (AI) and the "Internet of things" embedded in production lines and everyday objects. It contains many promises but also directly threatens human employment.

According to a study by Benedict- Frei and Osborne of Oxford University, 47% of the professions are "at high risk" being replaced by machines. McKinsey estimates that already 45% of the jobs are state machines that can replace them. In the United States, there are about 80 million jobs, with 15 million employees losing their jobs .

Israel is not evading this trend. A Taub institute study that examined the subject in Israel defined 39% of jobs in Israel as being designed to disappear completely. In Amazon Go, the supermarket that Amazon recently opened, there are no sellers, no funds, no queues, most of the magazines are robots. "Wal-Mart", the supermarket giant, is examining a similar project. A whole profession is canceled at once Before our eyes. "Amazon " has already begun the process of entry into Israel, " Walmart " is currently considering this .

Professionals feel "immune" from taking over machines more than a man sitting Bbotk'h parking lot, but this is an illusion that has no basis in reality. The accelerated development of artificial intelligence leads to the change not only threatening industrial and manufacturing workers, but also accountants, lawyers, designers, and other white-collar workers.

In fact, the threat to some of the professions is greater than that of manual labor. If you type in Google, search words Will robots take my job (" " If you are an accountant, the chances of your profession disappearing are 94%." If you overlap or overlap in the barber shop, only 11% (The website does not say anything for politicians ...).

Consider a contract lawyer, for example. Instead of going through your contract to buy a new apartment and searching through its memory to see if it identifies "mines", the contract will be checked against a database that will compare it to millions of similar contracts and produce a much more efficient result. Such software is already within reach, Israeli entrepreneurs are among their developers. A study of the Israeli start-up LAWGEEX For example, he suggested that his artificial intelligence program had achieved far better results than human lawyers in diagnosing risks in confidentiality agreements. The doctor looking at your X-ray will also do less meticulous work, much slower than a "robot" that goes through hundreds of thousands of x-rays in seconds. In this case too, Israeli start- ups are at the forefront of the field .

It is true that most people seem to prefer the human contact of a doctor, but only until they find out that the chance of the machine detecting the cancer and saving their lives is hundreds of percent higher. To the "Watson" system of IBM For example, many medical applications. Already, it helps oncologists adapt medication to patients and radiologists in interpreting tests. It will not be long before the system can replace at least some of these professionals. Other machines are already engaged in tax consulting, graphic design, telemarketing and driving .

These are not future technologies. They exist and their prices go down every day. In a lecture given at the Israel Democracy Institute by Prof. Moshe Vardi, a technology expert at Rice University, he presented a simple but chilling statistic that illustrates the impact of technology on the labor market :

In the early 1990s, not long ago, the three leading companies in Detroit, the US capital, employed 1.2 million people and were worth $ 65 billion. Today, the three leading companies in Silicon Valley are worth $ 1.5 trillion, but employ only 190,000 workers .

In the old world, Germany's GDP is $ 3.5 trillion and produces 44 million people in the new world, the world's top six companies - Amazon, Google, Facebook , Microsoft, AliBaba and Apple - worth $ 4 trillion, .

The trend is clear. The future market needs far fewer people to produce much more. It is true that some of those who will leave the labor market will be converted to the professions of leisure and culture, but there is a limit to how Pilates instructors need the world .

The impact of this process is not only economic. It also creates a social threat. Replacing humans with machines is a scary idea. Growing social gaps create jealousy and anger. This is a toxic and dangerous social cocktail. Elections in the United States, the Berkazit , radical populism on the right and the left, were all influenced by the rise of the machines .

We are marching toward a new reality that requires new thinking, but the solutions offered by the economic and political leadership are old and devoid of programming. The talk about "universal salary "(UBI)Those who lose their jobs sound good only to those who thought that the old Marxist slogan "work according to ability, salary according to need" sounds good. First of all, because most people are not willing to live only from basic wages, secondly because work is not just a reward - it is also pride, a sense of community, self-image and sense of value. The experience accumulated shows that even in states with unemployment benefits that ensure a decent living, unemployment is depressing situation deprives man his dignity. A large proportion of the unemployed do not turn to meditation and flowering, but to religious groups, political extremism, alcohol and drugs .

Replacing human and machine does not threaten only the western countries like Israel and the United States. The Chinese economy, for example - based on cheap labor - will have a dramatic impact even more. Companies like "Apple" issued by the production lines of the iPhone to China, they put them back in coming to the US because robots do not get paid. In fact, there is a high probability that workers in the assembly plants in Shandong Province will soon build the robots that will retire them. At the end of the production process will return to the United States or Israel, but Chinese workers and would remain in .

The skilled worker of the current generation has a bachelor's degree and ten years of experience . The next generation skilled worker is a robot. He is not tired, he is not mistaken, and what is most dramatic - is much less expensive. Until recently the introduction of robots and -AI Enterprises and companies involved initial investment will happen deterred many. This initial investment becomes cheaper with each passing day. It is true that market forces are constantly eroding salaries to prevent the robots from invading, but this is a short-term solution and a long-term struggle. Once the garage payment machine costs less than the employee's salary in the next six months, the worker goes home .

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Do not be confused: Technological development is not a bad thing, but a good thing. The countries with the highest unemployment are not advanced countries like Israel, but countries like Djibouti and Zimbabwe (and the Gaza Strip) lag behind the technological revolution. We do not need and do not want to prevent Israel from being a leader in technology, but only to make sure we manage the risks correctly and not miss the opportunities. We must not make the classic mistake and face the future with the tools and principles of the past .

The economic opportunity inherent in the rise of the machines was well explained by Andrew G. Halden , chief economist of the Bank of England , -TUC ( "In the new world in which we live every time we replace people, our products and services become cheaper and raise the value of our money, pushing forward the demand for new products and services and new industries that will supply them. From the cycle they return to it (after undergoing the appropriate professional training, YL) to provide the new products and reduce unemployment. "

In fact, economies based on cheap labor like the Chinese or Indonesian economies will suffer the hardest blow. Economies based on high skill and innovation, such as in Israel and the US, can benefit from the process if managed correctly .

For this to happen, Israel needs a clear, visionary economic-technological strategy . It almost goes without saying that she does not have one. The Ministry of Science has recently given a research grant to the Samuel Neaman Institute to build a program that will deal with the rise of machines, but this is a local initiative that is not part of the current government's priorities. I am a big fan of the argument that the government can never be the solution (usually the problem), but even within a free market economy, the government has a role in creating the infrastructure that the private sector will use to find its way into the future. The prime minister's office should be led by the Prime Minister's Office, as part of a large national program. this is not happening. It does not even start to happen .

Apart from the frequent bragging about the success of Israeli high-tech (which stems mainly from processes that took place here in the 1990s), the government did not even hold a single discussion on the fact that 39% of Israeli workers could lose their jobs in the next few years. Neither the State Budget nor the Arrangements Law mention that the challenge before us is completely different from what we have dealt with in the past .

What the State of Israel should do - and it is one of the only countries in the world that has the tools to do so - is to intensify the process in which we are transformed from a production state to a research and development state. The one who will lead the move is the private market, because only he has the skills and skills, but the government must create the conditions that will allow local entrepreneurship to lead the change. In order for this to happen, we have to start already today (in fact we had to start yesterday) with some necessary steps:

The place to start is education. Our schools teach our children to do three things: read, write, and calculate. The time has come for us to pay attention to the fact that the machines have long passed us by reading and calculating, and they even close to us in writing. What is needed is to concentrate on developing creativity, working in small groups, solving problems, and using our noncognitive abilities .

The State of Israel must significantly increase government investment in higher education in technological fields. Journalist Nehemia Shtrasler brought to my attention a frightening statistic: in 2006, 233 graduates of Computer Science graduated from the Technion. Since the invention of smartphones, tablets , server farms, and global computing power has risen by thousands of percent. The number of Computer Science graduates at the Technion in 2017, on the other hand, instead of rising in many centuries, dropped to 230. The state, which is responsible for and subsidizes higher education, stands by and shrugs its shoulders. This does not create a future .

Israel should invest far more money not only in the technological faculties but also in the "return of the minds" project. We must bring back outstanding professors, researchers and scientists from all over the world. The government must conduct a completely different course of higher education. Not to spread investments, but to focus effort on outstanding faculties and institutes with technological bias such as the Weizmann Institute, the Faculty of Mathematics at the Hebrew University and the Faculty of Engineering at the Technion. It should significantly increase investment in pure science and set a national goal that within seven years we will have a university ranked among the top 20 in the world.

The government should also undertake the connection between academia and the industry. There are already proper models at the Weizmann Institute and the Technion, but these models need to operate on a national level, not as a local initiative. The connection should not only be for the local industry, but mainly for global companies. Instead of continuing to invest in inter-state partnerships from the past, as in India, Israel should be the first country to offer state-level cooperation - Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon .

In addition, Israel should continue to be available to capital. The Israeli "start-up nation" was established following the establishment of the government "Yozma" funds in the 1990s. Technological capabilities have always been here, but without the state encouraging broad capital investments that could simply leave elsewhere. There is now a lot of "cheap money" in the world that is looking for technological investment channels. Israel should make it easier to get here, cut through regulation, give tax incentives, and make it easier for local entrepreneurs to get financing. We have competitors. Trump has lowered corporate tax in the US to attract investors, Macaron has taken similar steps and turns France into a high-tech center, Israel should be attractive to investors and not give them the feeling that they are the enemy. .

At the same time, Israel needs to look completely differently at the Israeli labor market and develop - in cooperation with the Histadrut and the employers - an employment model similar to the model -FLEXICURITY Which is not focused on the workplace, but on the worker himself. Today, only 9% of the workers in the economy are employed directly in high-tech, and this figure can reach 20% in the next seven years and 40% in the next seven years, Within 15 years .

It may sound ambitious, but we've done it before. In the 1990s, thousands of engineers from the Soviet Union came to Israel. Many of them were forest engineers, cities, trains, and many other professions that did not fit the high-tech economy. Along with hundreds of engineers who have become redundant following the closure of the IAI Lavi project. As part of a coordinated national effort, the government prepared placement and training programs that made these engineers the human foundation of the "start-up nation". A similar national program should be applied today in engineering and technology.

Alongside the placement, the transformation must also come about: the government should help as many workers as possible to reach the Israeli high- tech economy. Even if at twenty-something they chose to be lawyers, bookkeepers, or any of the many professions that are going to disappear from our lives, they have to find a paved road to their second and third careers. The Haredi and Arab public are also enormous potential that must not be ignored. Each of them has other needs, which need other treatment. The Arab woman has a mobility problem, so the solution is broadband and the possibility of working from home. For Haredi men, who live in small apartments with many children, the solution is the opposite - Large central IT in their area of residence .

The government must also locate the places and branches in which instead of submitting to the mechanization process, Israel should lead it. Israeli agriculture, for example, should aspire to a situation in which agricultural robots replace foreign workers. It's good for farmers because it will cheapen them costs, it's good for the economy, and it solves a social problem instead of creating it .

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Pessimists go through all sorts of bad things twice, so it is best to concentrate on the positive possibilities and opportunities that we face .

It's true that some of the professions are disappearing, but history teaches us that exciting new professions that we do not think about right now will be created around us. The main feature of the revolution the previous industrial was the standardization of the products. "The customer can choose the car of any color he chooses," said Henry Ford at the beginning of the 20th century, "provided he chooses black." Today the situation is reversed. The new standard is that there is no standard. Each customer receives his own unique product. MIT Technology Review Last year reported to his readers the story of a BMW factory .In Greenville, South Carolina. Each and every one of the 400,904 cars that came out of the factory in 2016 was designed according to a specific specification requested by the buyer. This kind of unique products creates jobs, does not delete them.

On the other side of the globe, the flourishing of Israeli companies around the issue of autonomous cars is another excellent example of the fact that every risk has an opportunity. Israel has never had a foothold in the traditional car industry, but already there are about 450 start- ups operating in the autonomous vehicle.

Machines are still thought only machines. They work digitally and are not thought creatively like humans and they know how to produce but have trouble creating. The best example is language. Anyone who once used Google Translate asked himself how could a computer that has "swallowed" all existing dictionaries still speak so poorly? The answer is that language is not a mechanical tool. It is made up of associative leaps, creative ideas, our personality structure no less than our intelligence. Human beings are simply others, and creativity will always be in demand.

Even without intervening in market forces, the government can direct the economy to two or three issues in which we have a clear national interest and Israeli creativity has a built-in advantage. In addition to our leading cyber industries, robots and warps for military use are an area where we have a clear advantage. Israel can lead the journey toward the future battlefield, where soldiers will not have to meet the enemy because robots will do it for them .

There are quite a few interesting opportunities in this field FOOD-TECH ( Around which a national plan was developed for the development of the north, most of which was dropped without explanation from the last budget). The field of energy production - from advanced electromagnets to miniature panels that can generate electricity to an entire factory of solar energy - is a subject in which we can lead the world. In this field too, we can translate a technological advantage into geopolitical power : a country that will lead this issue will accumulate the same kind of power that the Arab countries had in the 1970s because of their control over the oil wells .

Machines are developing, but so are human beings. The role of the state is to ensure that human development is always one step ahead of the machines. In order for this to happen, the Israeli government needs to create an open, dynamic, innovative and capital-intensive work environment, and then move aside and let the private initiative act. We have done this before, we know how to do it in the future, but the government does not do so in the present. There is no way to change the direction of an entire country without government infrastructure, broad vision and clear strategy.

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