Last week’s contribution focused on whether Workers’ Day is still relevant today. I believe that answer is an unqualified ‘yes’. The next obvious question is whether it will still be relevant in tomorrow’s world. To answer this second question, one needs to have an understanding (if that were at all possible) of the future of work. What will work be like in the future?
There were two headlines in foreign media that caught my attention this week. One said that ‘Artificial intelligence could be as transformative as the industrial revolution’.
The basic message of the article which appeared in The Guardian was that artificial intelligence could bring about great social and economic changes and huge numbers of people risk becoming jobless.
The second headline − also appearing in The Guardian – was ‘Another warning about the AI apocalypse? I don’t buy it’.
The key message in this article was that artificial intelligence does have risks which should make us all more sober about it, but it also has potential for huge advances. The author claimed that we need some global rules to control it.
As such, there seems to be agreement that artificial intelligence could be the single factor that will influence most significantly the future of work.
This is because of its possible uses and the extent to which it will replace the human person at the place of work. Some have gone as far as saying that a majority of jobs that we shall be doing in seven years’ time (that is 2030) have not as yet been created.
Automation can lead to creating good quality work, but this requires investing in people as much as we invest in technology
I do not think that at this point we can stop the impact of artificial intelligence on work. It can be regulated. However, one would be very correct to doubt as to whether the development of artificial intelligence can be regulated. Cryptocurrency was meant to be regulated through some global rules, but I do not think we have been very successful at it. So why should we expect AI to be regulated successfully?
Therefore, what is work going to look like in the future? We could have a repetition of what happened at the time of the industrial revolution, or we could take a totally different scenario. History has shown us that automation negatively impacts conditions of work, incomes and even the quality of work. It spreads fear, unhappiness and anxiety among workers, and very often leads to overwork. Charlie Chaplin’s film Modern Times describes very well the consequences of automation at work.
However, it need not be this way. Automation (by whichever name one wants to call it) can free up workers’ time for them to do more creative and complex tasks.
Automation can lead to creating good quality work, but this requires investing in people as much as we invest in technology.
In spite of the fact that unemployment in our country continues to be at a record low and the number of persons in employment continues to increase (admittedly due to the influx of foreign labour, mainly from outside the EU), it does not mean that we have good quality work.
Good quality work is more than just employment. It is work that promotes the dignity of the human person, empowerment of employees and equality. It is work that promotes the well-being of the employees and has fair pay and employment conditions. It is work that focuses on human values. It is not so much whether artificial intelligence or robots will take jobs away, but whether we keep the human person at the heart of work.
Nowadays, we talk of the ESG agenda and rightly so. The social partners in this country need to adopt another, equally important agenda – the future of work, where investment in the human person goes hand in hand with investment in technology, thereby creating good quality work.