Don't Fear the Future

Barely a week goes by without someone in a position of authority warning us about the perils of technology.

If these neo-luddites are to be believed, we are racing toward a grim, dystopian future of mass unemployment, physical isolation, and digital narcissism -with future generations condemned to spend their lives anaesthetised by electronic devices whilst Artificial Intelligence (AI) does all the work.

This kneejerk response to progress was most recently articulated by Transport Workers Union National Secretary Tony Sheldon at the recent NSW Labor Party Conference.

Calling for heavy regulation of AI – and expressing extreme concern about self-driving vehicles – Mr Sheldon played the populist card of pandering to society’s fear of the unknown. 

Through the delivery of clichés such as “economics is driving the push for AI, not voters and not the community”, Mr Sheldon exposed the deeply regressive nature of the contemporary union movement.

Henry Ford is often (mis)quoted as having said “if I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said faster horses”.

This philosophy rings true today. Lack of familiarity with the future is a nonsensical reason to shun its approach.

And yet, confronting unfounded technophobia is something that our education system does on an almost daily basis.

As NSW Minister for Education I too frequently hear commentators encourage teachers to impose a fatalist mindset upon our children.

Rather than embracing the future, we are told our kids should be protected from it - that they should be taught technological advancement will, if unchecked, limit their future employment opportunities. 

Such an approach is misguided. While we always need to be cognisant of the way in which technology affects our children (hence why I recently announced a review into the impacts of smartphone use within school grounds), allowing a backward thinking 1970’s industrial relations mindset to influence our education system would be a dreadful mistake.

It is undoubtedly true that AI will replace some jobs in the future. But these jobs will in turn be replaced by other (often higher paying) jobs that need a different skill set.

The goal of our education system must therefore be to ensure our children are equipped with the tools needed to adapt flexibly to a changing world. They may not be taxi drivers, but they will be involved in designing and managing the automated systems that pilot these vehicles.

It is natural for those of us that are Baby Boomers and Gen X to retreat into our protectionist comfort zone in the face of technological disruption that we often don’t understand. Indeed, at an individual level, it has always been easier to protect the job we have as opposed to re-skilling to undertake the job that a competitive nation needs.

Yet when juxtaposed against periods of upheaval throughout the last few centuries, the flaws of this defensive mindset are exposed.

Each of these periods – whether the renaissance, the enlightenment, the scientific revolution or the industrial revolution – share a common pedagogical feature: their education systems all became expansive rather than reductive – valuing generalist, multidisciplinary knowledge over the teaching of specific skills linked to jobs that would inevitably disappear.

It is crucial that this remains the case for today’s technological revolution. We don’t know what types of jobs our children will have. Many of these jobs don’t yet exist. But imbuing our children with the flexibility to thrive in them is paramount.

Rather than encouraging children to embrace the faux existential nonsense spouted by those so fearful of technological change they have never taken an Uber, we should be instilling our children with optimism and excitement about the opportunities that the technological revolution presents.

Whether it is environmental restoration, transitioning to renewable energy, medical advances, space exploration, or improving road safety, resolving the great challenges of our time will rely on our children fully embracing AI and other cutting edge technology.

It is becoming clear that we are racing toward a future with immense potential to drive productivity and improve standards of living to levels unfathomable just a generation ago. Yet to realise this potential we must reject populist fear-mongering from the likes of the TWU.

History is littered with futurists mistakenly claiming that technology will eliminate jobs. John Maynard Keynes, no less, forecast that technological progress might result in a 15-hour workweek by 2030 (we live in hope).

In decades to come, the present doomsday prophecies from union dinosaurs will no doubt look equally preposterous.