Interesting post from UR
it will be interesting to see how the 4 day week pans out. While 6 month studies here in Ireland with some of the high tech companies prooved positive, I cant imagine their finance teams want to pay folks for 8 hours of work they did not do. Alternatlively, it could mean working a 10 hour day 4 days a week. Not sure how that will pan out as far as quality of live goes. The point about Jobs in the article was very interesting.
"The world economic forum estimated. that by 2025 technology will create 12M more Jobs".... in the aggregate. https://bit.ly/3VhzHVO
A similar sentiment was relayed in the Guide to Implementing Industrial Robots – IET. There is a new edition of this document being drafted in 2023. If anyone has found similar references on the long term job creation as a result of new technology I would be delighted to hear and add to the guide mentioned above.
#robotics
it will be interesting to see how the 4 day week pans out. While 6 month studies here in Ireland with some of the high tech companies prooved positive, I cant imagine their finance teams want to pay folks for 8 hours of work they did not do. Alternatlively, it could mean working a 10 hour day 4 days a week. Not sure how that will pan out as far as quality of live goes. The point about Jobs in the article was very interesting.
"The world economic forum estimated. that by 2025 technology will create 12M more Jobs".... in the aggregate. https://bit.ly/3VhzHVO
A similar sentiment was relayed in the Guide to Implementing Industrial Robots – IET. There is a new edition of this document being drafted in 2023. If anyone has found similar references on the long term job creation as a result of new technology I would be delighted to hear and add to the guide mentioned above.
#robotics
Alternatlively, it could mean working a 10 hour day 4 days a week. Not sure how that will pan out as far as quality of live goes.
It is (or at least was while I was working there) very normal down here in Plymouth UK to have 4 1/2 day week working, finishing Friday lunchtimes, with longer working days and shorter lunch breaks. Most of us absolutely loved it. Where I worked, every so often our various parent companies would try to move us to 5 days working, for consistency with the other UK sites, and we'd have to explain back up to that external management that if they wanted to keep our staff the one thing they mustn't touch was finishing early on Fridays!! What we found was that it gave different benefits to different people - surfers could get to the beach, shopaholics could get to the shops when they were quieter, diy-ers could get to suppliers that didn't open at the weekend, people with children had a little bit of time to get things done while the children were still at school, and of course getting away for the weekend was much easier.
By chance I was talking to one of my colleagues yesterday, I knew he worked a 4 day week, but I hadn't realised until yesterday that he was partly achieving this through longer (8.5 hour) days (our standard week is 37.5 hours). But then he doesn't have young children, and does have other caring responsibilities which make having three clear days available really useful. For those, say, with young children this could be less useful.
As a separate thought: robotics may or may not align to allowing more flexible working practices. My only direct experience was, as touched on above, introducing a robot assisted production line into a previously fully manual assembly process. It hugely increased turnover per head, but to make it work at its best (and, to be fair, to meet demand) it meant we moved to 24 hour working on that line which we had never had on site before. This actually probably decreased flexibility for that team - we had to try much harder to ensure there was always cover available to keep the line running at a steady tick rate to suit the robotics, it was much harder to lose cover one day and make up by increasing it the following day. In fact in the 2010s we were basically right back to a 1920s Henry Ford style production line! It would not have been an issue with a fully robotic system, but it's a point to bear in mind for a semi robotic system.
Might be worth considering / mentioning in the update to the "Guide to Implementing Industrial Robots"? (Our case study was far too small to be interesting in itself, but I wouldn't have thought we were unique.)
"The world economic forum estimated. that by 2025 technology will create 12M more Jobs"
Interesting article, however my personal view (based on no research, only experience and strictly amateur looking back into history) is that jobs will remain at around the same level whatever happens or not in the technology - if AI reduces jobs then new jobs will be created in other areas and vice versa. Because with our current system without jobs people can't eat, so the job market adapts and we create new jobs basically to keep the money flow the same. Huge swathes of roles have disappeared or vastly shrunk over my career (42 years so far) through massive technology changes: typing pools, secretaries, travel agents, tea ladies, assembly workers, farm workers, miners etc etc. But employment levels have stayed more-or-less the same. (I'm talking longer term of course - the short term impact, particularly on skilled workers, can be huge and devastating, and I wouldn't want to underplay that.)
I'm guessing there must be some proper research around this somewhere - not so much looking at whether particular technologies will increase or decrease jobs, rather on how the job market adapts to changes for whatever reason such that full employment is (at least up to now) always retained? I do feel that these types of articles (which again have been around back to at least the 1960s and I suspect well before that) are a bit of red herring: actually AI may directly reduce jobs, but it's unlikely to matter - society seems to be likely to find a way to pay people to do other, maybe completely unconnected, work that is currently non-existent or poorly resourced (although again it be reassuring to see some real research behind this!).
I suspect the real challenge is, and has always been, that for workers who've somewhat built their sense of self around a particular role ("I'm a xxx, that's just what I am", and in some cases "that's what my family have always done") it's very difficult to dismantle that and move in a new direction. Which is what any new technology does make happen. I notice in the current issue of the Guide it is mentioned that robotics may replace lower skilled jobs with higher skilled jobs, equally I'd suggest it should mention that the opposite can happen (e.g. I've seen this happening with automating manufacturing testing, replacing skilled test engineers with test operatives, but there are many many other examples). And in either case it doesn't alter the fact that those roles have been lost - it's of no comfort at all to someone that they are redundant but the good news is that the company is employing someone higher/lower skilled to replace them. (Or that their job is being downgraded.)
So the challenge for the companies involved is avoiding sounding like that all too true scene in The Office:
"Well, there's good news and bad news. The bad news is that Neil will be taking over both branches, and some of you will lose your jobs. Those of you who are kept on will have to relocate to Swindon, if you wanna stay. I know, gutting. On a more positive note, the good news is, I've been promoted, so... every cloud. You're still thinking about the bad news aren't you?"
"There's no good news, David. There's only bad news and irrelevant news"
AI and robotics have huge opportunities to improve society, we just need to keep well aware that the immediate impact on individuals can be very challenging and I feel we have a responsibility to be aware of and manage these (or at least raise awareness that they need to be sensitively managed). Within that evidence based bigger and long term picture which may be an overall positive one.
P.S. I used to be an analogue design engineer, remember those, back in the olden days? I still keep it on as a hobby, along with woodworking and occasionally messing around with steam trains...I always tried to make sure my kids never expected that any job or role would be "for life", but equally that realisation is scary.
Cheers,
Andy
Hi Andy Millar thanks for the considered response. I like your observation that
society seems to be likely to find a way to pay people to do other, maybe completely unconnected, work that is currently non-existent or poorly resourced (although again it be reassuring to see some real research behind this!).
there was a good article in E&T which suggested new roles that would be created around the introduction of robotics as follows;
Algorithm auditor, empathy consultant. Health data analyst, Automated electric vehicle fleet manager, simulated voice user experience engineer or licence auditors. [1]
There was also an interesting publication "future-manufacturing-engineer-report" by ImechE and IET encouraging lifelong learning to allow folks to pivot towards new technologies and roles required in industry. It also gave advice on what skills would be needed for industy, energy & transport changes needed. It highlighted some of the skill sets that engineers will need in the coming 5 - 10 years.
[1] Engineering and Technology oct 2019 Vol 14 issue 9
#Robotics
It is (or at least was while I was working there) very normal down here in Plymouth UK to have 4 1/2 day week working, finishing Friday lunchtimes, with longer working days and shorter lunch breaks.
If you are going to invade the UK, do it on a Friday afternoon!
As far as RN was concerned, POETS allowed people to get home for the weekend and to some extent was recompense for weekend watch-keeping and time at sea.
A veterinary friend of mine once asked how many hours nurses work in a week. My answer was 37½. His reply was, "That's only just over a day and a half."
Every man women and child owes at least £35k each in the UK.
Down to government debt, which will.need to be paid at some point. There is no way a 4 day week is going to work until the debt is repaid. This is a massive burden on leisure time and life worth.
Yet we're signed up for more and more debt with the Green revolution.
Trillions and trillions.
Every man women and child owes at least £35k each in the UK.
When was the Government ever not in debt?
Before about 1690. William of Orange was the monarch who oversaw the first sale of UK govt debt, and the organization that managed it later became called the Bank of England. So only about 320 years - diddly squat in terms of the history of the UK - but then I live in a market town with an abbey that has parts that date back to 900 and something.
Mike
There is no law in economics that states old jobs eliminated through technology have to be replaced by new jobs in a 1:1 ratio. The new jobs could be in a completely different city, or even country for that matter.
You are right in that new jobs might require a higher level or completely different type of skill, but alternatively, they could end up becoming less skilled with lower pay and poorer working conditions.
Something I have noticed is the marked rise in the number of fast food outlets in towns and cities since 2000ish. Not just big national chains but independent shops. I can't help wondering if the rise isn't just because of consumer demand but is also a result of a lack of local job opportunities due to automation and the closure of industries.
I'm not sure how this lifelong learning will turn out in practice unless you happen to be part of the fraternity who gets their education off YouTube videos.
There doesn't seem to be much in the way of 'refresher' courses for middle aged engineers to learn about modern technologies that were not significant (or even existed) at the time they studied for an engineering degree. I even had a carpenter with an engineering degree ask me if any additional courses existed for people past the age of 30. He has since given up completely and will just stick with building work for as long as his body can take it.
I'm not sure if there has been much research into casual education and it's effect on the economy and employment. Education still officially means formal education taught in a classroom leading to a recognised qualification.
One could argue that technology now has the potential to make teachers redundant as many things can be learned online. What is inhibitive is the position that education in Britain is more about qualifications than the acquisition of useful knowledge and skills.
What is inhibitive is the position that education in Britain is more about qualifications than the acquisition of useful knowledge and skills.
But much less so than on the continent where you have to have the right bits of paper to even be able to discuss something. Germany is particularly like that - CV missing the magic spell, no job.. Here we are more accepting of folk rocking up who are good at the task even if their historical paperwork is a bit odd.
I do agree that is a trap to avoid - paying membership to some institution and holding a set of tickets gained 20 years ago is not really any guarantee of current competences.
Mike.
That is a fair point you make as there are plenty of engineers in Britain who don't hold a degree in anything.
However, my experience of things is that education after Y9 - or even primary school - is now more focused on qualifications rather than the acquisition of knowledge and skills. The only exception are vocational and training courses.
This is why I'm wondering if lifelong education, more often than not, is a case of barking up the wrong tree, and instead what is really needed are more training courses for postgraduates and middle aged people.
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