The future of work
Maarten Ectors
Innovative Technologist, Business Strategist and Senior Executive | Bridging Technology & Business for Lasting Impact
In the next five to ten years
We will see a massive amount of jobs being destroyed in the next three years onwards due to technological innovations. Robotaxis will make taxi drivers, bus drivers, train drivers, truck drivers,… irrelevant. Humanoids will be starting to work in factories, doing deliveries, and focus on repetitive or dangerous tasks.
Generative AI will make a lot of office workers and specialists in programming, design, marketing, finances, investment, medicine, law,… 20x to 100x more productive for which we will need exponentially less. Decentralised finance and tokenisation will disintermediate banking, insurance, investment management,… and make lots of intermediaries irrelevant.
Solar, wind and battery prices will continue to fall exponentially for which oil and gas usage will implode and energy distribution will have to deal with oversupply from customer generated electricity.
We will see a whole new set of job categories coming to live as well. Prompt engineers and AI experts will assist the AI to design, solve, cure, create,… the future. Solar and wind energy as well as batteries, EV chargers,… will need to be deployed on a global scale. We need to change our electricity network, the way we heat (and cool) buildings,… Virtually unlimited energy on sunny and windy days will create new jobs around high energy usage solutions, green hydrogen production and usage,…
Desalination will be possible on a scale we have never seen for which land, which has not been cultivable before, can become food producing. Meat, fish and other food can be printed or lab-grown for which food designer will become a new job. Although humanoids and robotaxis will do a lot of production in robofactories nearby, we will see a lot of new jobs around design, maintenance, planning, marketing,…?
Online ecosystems both in mobile app form, game media, and immersive internet will grow for which lots of new virtual jobs will be created.
Entertainment will become personalised and generated for which we will see more micro-influencers than before.
We will understand our bodies better thanks to wearable sensors, AI-based medicines, robotised blood testing,... As such we will need both more physical and mental health professionals for prevention instead of care.
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Given that work is no longer a specialisation for life, we will need to retrain constantly and require help with mentoring, guidance, education,…?
Recycling and green tech will grow.
We will move away from having large groups of specialists doing the same to organising work in micro-organisations for which a lot of new ways to organise work and micro-work will create employment.
Police and law enforcement will be needed more than ever with massive shifts in employment making complete industries unemployed overnight.
Beyond ten years
Our need to work will become less. With unlimited energy and humanoids being able to design, produce and transport anything our hearts desire, we will need a lot less people to work. Given mass unrest led to the assassination of some entrepreneurs who wanted to amass all profits from the large robot and AI companies, society decided that all humans should get a minimum living wage and all food/water/heat/cold they desire. Afterwards, only a fraction decided to keep on working after the big society revolution. The rest found purpose in other activities like friendship circles, assisting others, learning for pleasure, conserving history,...
Conclusion
In the next decades, society is about to transform completely. The way work is organised around large multinationals with big teams of specialists is ill suited for a future of constant change. The speed at which new skills can be acquired will be more important than the depth of historical skills. Many “traditional jobs” will disappear and the organisations behind them. New jobs will be created as well as new ways of working. We will see AI and humanoids taking over until many of us will see a future in which we no longer work for a salary to survive but focus more on other activities which bring purpose beyond a 8x5 in the office job. What would you do if you no longer “needed to work”?
Graduated from North South University
1 年This article of The Waves, [Dull Jobs for Human - Dead Robots Redefine Future of Work], discusses how automation and robotics will affect the future of work. It claims that many white-collar jobs are easy to automate, while many dull jobs require human abilities that are hard to imitate by robots. How can we help the workers who lose their jobs to reskill and find new opportunities? How can we balance the benefits and costs of automation and robotics for society? I would like to hear your thoughts.
Thought-provoking stuff. You have just described most SciFi plots of the last 20 years. Would be interesting to see how population increases will impact this with increasing populations will the tech keep up and will it be freely distributed? Each country could have different levels of Universal income based on how much of the technology they have developed causing conflict for those with no traditional job to do. Opens up lots of questions.
Ah, the notion of a future with no work and a universal income is a topic of much debate. Proponents argue that automation and AI could handle many tasks, freeing humans for creative and intellectual pursuits. Critics worry about the social and economic implications, such as potential inequality and lack of purpose. The feasibility also hinges on political will and economic models to sustain such a system. It’s a complex issue that intersects with technology, economics, and even philosophy.
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1 年Great piece Maarten, whilst we may be pulled into the tech we must also understand thar the nature of mentorship , guidance and education must all change in parallel - it’s essential this expertise accelerates its expertise. Never before have the skills of inspiring change been as important . Thank you your insight is so motivating
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