In today’s
society we’re dependent on all kind of different technologies. It helps us in
our everyday lives as well as in our working lives. But what will come out if
this dependence when the technologies get more advanced and more intelligent. Will
the technologies overcome us and affect the labor force, “are the droids going
to take are jobs?”
In his presentataion, Andrew
McAffe discusses the trends in employment-to-population ratio. Today there is a
big gap between the actual jobs and the working age population. If we assume the
progression will continue as it has done in the past, the gap will not close. I
think the gap will grow faster that we can imagine. The technology development
hasn’t reached its maximum potential. In the future we’ll have artificial intelligence
that will help us develop the new technology. The important question in this statement is where do we stand when the
mental power of technologies overcome our own?
Today’s
articles can be written by algorithms and you can have an instantaneous,
automatic translation service in your smartphone. McAffe predicts that there
will be many areas in the future where technology will be more efficient and
cheaper than human recourses, but we all need to see the benefits of this development too. He talks
about how the everyday life of people all around the world improves by
technology. The poor fisherman gets a cellphone and his society climb a step in
the hierarchy ladder.
We need to
focus on the great things about new technology and shape our future along them.
If we just stand beside and let the technologies get ahead of us, we all will
be domed. But if we invite the new developments and include them in our way of
thinking, I think we all will benefit from them. As Freeman Dyson ones said; “Technologies
is a gift from God. After the gift of life it’s perhaps the greatest of God’s
gifts. It’s the mother of civilizations, of arts and of science.”
By this I
will call myself a huge digital optimist just like McAffe and I hope we can
work side by side of the droids in the future and not compete with them.
