Women Will Be Hurt More By Automation

“The short end of the stick? Again?” Joanne said rolling the dough onto a piece of parchment paper. We’re making homemade pizza for dinner. 

“This Automation is a kind of sexist Terminator or what?” she laughed. “It makes sense after all. Terminator is a male.”

“Sarah Connor, here’s the diced peppers,” I pathetically mimicked a terminator's voice. “I’ll be back with the shredded cheese.”

We’re joking, but the topic is critical. 'The Rise of the Robots,' as coined by journalists, is here and set to accelerate. Technology advances exponentially, taking us all into a dramatically different new era.

“The social impact will be massive, huh?” she said looking at her six-year-old daughter playing with leftover veggies and some dough. 

She’s a Millennial. Strong sense of community but also a feeling of insecurity. And unsettlement. Unquestionably hungry to craft a more purposeful and rewarding adult life. Never going to slow down.

“The good news is that automation will increase productivity, which reduces prices. Sometimes to zero. Cool, huh?” I delivered my line perfectly. “That's what technology does, after all. It grows the global economic pie.” Stop. Pause. Looking away as if unable to make eye contact. 

“And the bad news?” Joanne whispered. 

“As technology races ahead, an unprecedented wave of job destruction is coming,” I dropped the guillotine blade.

“I think the pizza is ready,” she said after a while. “Bonnie, go wash your hands.”

I can see her demons. How are you preparing your kid for a world with fifty percent unemployment?

“Wasn’t technology supposed to create new jobs?” she tried to smile.

“Yes, it creates. But the new jobs require different and higher-level skills than the ones they replaced.”

“That’s bad news for a lot of people,” she shuddered. 

“As artificial intelligence improve, companies are becoming increasingly likely to hire ‘new machines’ instead of ‘new people.' Intelligent machines are more and more substituting for routine human work.”

“Routine?”

“Skills that could be easily mastered by machines,” I nodded. “Those people have less to nothing to offer the job market.”

“It was in prime time news that the first hotel staffed by robots opened in Japan, I guess. Eliminating scores of jobs. And I saw the Amazon Grab-n-Go store video on YouTube. Cool, the ‘no lines, no checkout’ headline. I was amused, but I didn’t think that —” 

“Exactly. Just try to imagine,” I rushed to set the scene. "Scale the new grocery format operated by AI to the global supermarket industry. Top retailers are in an epic global battle, hundreds of billions of dollars are at stake. And because the ‘no staff’ grocery model offers an enormous competitive advantage, supermarkets will rush to implement it. And you'll have hundreds of thousands of lost jobs.” 

“Hundreds of thousands of people are sleeping peacefully right now,” she winced. “Not knowing there’s a nightmare sentence lurking in their near future. Cashiers, customer service representatives, waitresses,” she started to see the terrifying picture. “Mostly women.”

“Add high-street travel agents, many of them probably disrupted by online travel platforms,” I said. “Add motor insurers, probably disrupted by the driverless cars. Add a high sort of consultants, probably disrupted by robot-adviser websites.”

“Secretaries, administrative assistants, human relations, retail sales associate, bank, and financial clerk. Mostly women.”

“Add third-party businesses, where much of the work is mindless data entry. You don’t need a specialized skill or even a college degree to do the job well,” I said. “These non-executive white-collar jobs will be rendered obsolete by automation. It’s easy to understand why companies see an opportunity to do things more efficiently.”

“One’s efficiency is another’s unemployment,” she squinted.

“Businesses are focused on their agendas. Their job is not to hire lots of people but to make things and move them around as efficiently as possible. And as technology races ahead, it will leave many people behind. We’re talking hundreds of millions in the next twenty or thirty years.”

“Technology is eating up the world,” she flinched. “Bonnie, finish your pizza.”

“Hey, it's not so bad,” I said trying to change the course and comfort her. “Technology frames a future that is genuinely exciting. Just look at the rise of on-demand platforms we’re already accustomed to, matching customers with contractors selling everything from taxi services to accommodation.”

“Yeah, they scaled at full speed, entering our habits almost without realizing it,” she sneered. “Don’t look at my credit card statement.”

“In fact, I can’t think of an industry we cannot develop with STEM,” I mused.

She said nothing. Strained. 

“You know, STEM. Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics,” I continued in deliberate casualness, as if ‘no big deal with automation, all under control.' “Now, rather than using the four disciplines in a separate way, STEM integrates them into an interdisciplinary and applied approach based on —”

“Are you trying to hypnotize me?” she caught me.

“Huh? How come?” 

“Kaa the Snake,” she simmered. “‘Trus-s-s-s-t in me, let go of your fear now, trus-s-s-s-t in me,’” she undulates fixing my eyes. “Give me a break with your STEM,” she seethed. “Fifty percent of jobs are in danger of being made irrelevant due to technological change in a few short years. How about that, smart guy? What we gonna do?” she said, her face aflame. A simmering tornado.

“Bonnie, bedtime story,” I said. “Go brush your teeth.”

“May I read her ‘The Jungle Book’?” I asked Joanne.

“Yeah, Baloo, ‘Forget about your worries and your strife,'” she sneered. 

She rose from the table and started to wash the dishes. Facing her demons. A high unemployment rate leads to high social troubles. Drugs, domestic violence, child abuse, despair.

“An era of high joblessness,” she raged when I went back to the kitchen. “Think about what will happen to millions of people out there. They will not be able to support themselves, or their children. Think of their despair. Our whole world will be flipped over.” 

“You’re right,” I said. “We’re at the beginning of the most critical social issue of our time.”

“And most of the people do not even have a clue. They don’t see it coming,” she said playing with her red wine glass.

“They’re not subscribers of Harvard Business Review, you know. Stephen Hawking saying that the rise of artificial intelligence is likely to extend job destruction deep into the middle classes will never be popular on Facebook.”

“Most of us we do not even have a clue,” she said again. "We're like a frog in a boiling pot getting hotter one degree at a time." 

“Some say that the impact of technology on the future of work will be more severe than initially reported. However, the first and most affected will be the less educated," I said. "If you ask me, I'll say the least able to adapt and adjust.”

“Women?” she chewed her lip.

“The vulnerable ones,” I nodded. “Women lacking in education. Women without formal qualifications. Lower-income women who cannot afford new training. Rural women. Older women.”

“Immigrant women,” she added. “Women of ethnic minorities who face more workplace discrimination.”

“Housewives with unemployed husbands. Men unemployment will severely impact families, especially children.”

”We are talking millions of women here,” she mused.

I nodded. Many women will be hurt.

“Single mothers, like me. What we gonna do? It’s just us,” she said looking to Bonnie’s room.

“Hey, you’re my Sarah Connor. And I’m your Guardian.”

“You’re just a franchise, Pops” she tried to laugh. “How can you help me to fight Skynet?”

Ouch. “Pops?” That hurt. 

“There’s no doubt that incredible benefits await us from intelligent machines. But creating a fulfilling life depends on finding ways to race with the machine rather than racing against the machine.”

“You’re saying… learning new skills, huh?”

“Right. You have to learn the new skills of the new economy,” I approved. “Young Millennials like you and Gen-Z women are educated, independent, and capable. You’re digital natives. You're more adaptable and resilient to change. That’s good,” I said refilling the glasses. “But just being a Millennial is not a safety net. Knowledge is.”

“But I do my job very well,” she looked up.

“No new skill,” I made my point. “You do the same thing. Better, faster, more. But no new skill. Your development stopped. The biggest peril of becoming obsolete over time. If you never acquire new capabilities, you will only level off.”

“And become a primary target,” she said with an emptiness in her voice.

“New technologies regularly consume the overall competency of any individual,” I nodded. “Over time, someone with years of tenure in almost any field could be less expert than a newcomer. Tenure doesn’t guarantee expertise. Neither high performance.”

“So I have to learn new skills,” she mused.

“As fast as you can,” I agreed, “ripping up the road behind you. There are no speed limits.” 

I took a sip of my wine. “It is said that Michelangelo signed the phrase ‘ancora imparo,’ Italian for ‘I am still learning,’ into many of his works.”

“I stared at Michelangelo’s David while on vacay in Florence with my ex,” she said. “Never saw an ass that firm. A masterpiece.”

We laughed. She’ll learn. She’ll be okay. Bonnie won’t be on her own for college.