How Tech is Changing The Future of Work

With the arrival of #AmazonGo beta store, we are all quite sure everything will Amazon Go itself. But there are some serious points here about the future of work and the coming age of automation.

It's no longer just about what Amazon means for the future of retail, it's also about the more serious economic, social and ethical implications of technology's role in human society.

Technology Companies are Disrupting Traditional industries

• Via QR code enabled Amazon Go app, the subscription model that is Amazon Prime gets more valuable. Amazon is adding increasing value to it's subscription model that can be summarized by these few words:

1. Echo
2. Fresh
3. Dash
4. Go
5. Google of stuff - Netflix of shopping entertainment

Technology Companies are Making Repetitive Jobs obsolete

• IoT, robotics and AI in retail will inevitably disrupt common roles such as the cashier, sales associate, shelf stocker.
• Self-checkout is going fully mobile with analytics made possible with computer vision that utilizes LIDAR sensors (lasers), that monetizes everything you do in the future smart store.

The Future of Advertizing is Based on the Premise of a Loss of Privacy

With the analytics of the store of the future, advertising will not only be personalized to you but timed with predictive (and prescriptive) analytics.

Personal assistants will be designed to know you better than you know yourself, as the AI-human hybrid consumer reality takes shape.

Wearables that have embedded sentiment analytics, will mean the smart home (Echo, Google Home, etc...) will know your mood and adapt accordingly when you arrive home.

Yes, the Minority Report's in-store advertising like in the Tom Cruise video is coming true, it's happening:

Tech Companies are Disrupting Legacy Industries

But the hype and the buzz is a distraction for what is really occurring here. There are increasingly signs that the automation economy is closer than we think.

• Amazon is changing retail as a logistics company.
• Facebook is changing content as a media company.
• Airbnb is changing hospitality as a player in the sharing-economy.
• Uber is changing transporation as a player in the on-demand economy.

Winners and Losers

In a very short span of time, the signs point to a scenario where the 2020s will be the definitive and disruptive decade of automation are clear. We have to start planning now to adapt to the jobs that will still be there.

The creepy interactive Future-Gap store in the video is not actually creepy, it's just how the future will work.

Companies like Facebook, Google, Amazon and others are building the infrastructure of a data-centric society now, as AI and machine-learning is maturing in a period of convergence. In this iteration of the American dream, fewer people will have greater privilege and ownership over the future, creating an ethical quagmire in human leadership and the unequal distribution of wealth.

Automation puts Wealth into the Hands of a few Global Tech Corporations

The first wave of automation is implicated in a few major technological events:

1. Self-driving vehicles (Truck drivers become obsolete)
2. The Future Store (Cashiers and most sales associates become obsolete)
3. The Smart Factory (robotics) and Additive Manufacturing (3D-printing) where (fewer humans are required in the factory)

Coincidentally there are about 3.5 million truck drivers and 3.5 million cashiers alone in the U.S. That's already 7 million jobs. The automation of FinTech, HealthTech and finally EdTech respectively, that is more gradual, will put even more people out of work in Banking, Finance and for medical technicians, teachers, nurses and so forth.

When General Electric coined the term “automation” back in 1947, the fear of "robots" taking over our jobs felt so tangible and strange. Now, we know this will happen.

People Can Adapt to Anything; But our Economy will Need to be Agile

Rebelling against automation makes as much sense as if people had rebelled against the age of Enlightenment. However, with declining participating in the labor force with massive unemployment coming, a Universal Basic Income system and a Blockchain of wealth distribution has to occur due to the most serious social problem of our times, unequal distribution of capital.

• Automation will not "create" as many jobs as will be lost in the short-term.
• Technology companies continue to stratify the economic elite, while everyone else becomes substantially poorer eroding the middle class. (what many of us have basically lived post-2008)

A 2013 study found that 47% of American workers had jobs considered a “ high risk” for potential  automation. If the same study occurred in 2020, how do you figure that percentage would look?

• White collar high-skilled jobs once deemed "safe from AI", could soon be replaced by AI machines.
• The McKinsey Global Institute recently concluded that about 45% of all activities are potentially on the chopping block, through that this process might take decades to occur.

Silicon Valley and Major Tech Companies, Not Government, Lead Us into the Future

The technocracy elite know this is coming, with Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk having predicted that, eventually, governments would likely provide baseline income for every citizen, regardless of their employment status, saying “I’m not sure what else one would do.” This is what we refer to as UBI (universal basic income).

It's already common idea in places like Scandinavia and Canada.

• Preliminary iterations of UBI could actually be quite exploitative and unfair to ordinary citizens. As the ultra-rich do not actually want to share their wealth to create a socialistic paradise or urban utopias quite yet.
• The end-game before the post-automation economy version of capitalism could easily lead to increasing social unrest due to mainstream poverty, inequality and exaggerated assaults (coercion) of the 1% on the rest of the population.

Calm After the Storm; Transhumantic Age Begins

Ultimately the post-automation economy looks bright, with a better standard of living and less monotonous relationship to work, community and new forms of social belonging not based upon economic necessity, but upon freedom, creativity, global community and a future of work that changes upon the evolution of values, experiences, relationships and preferences, and not simply for our survival.

By then, human beings will have further "internalized" technology and immersed themselves in it becoming an extension of technology itself. The collective addiction to mobile devices and the communities behind them, lead progressively to more sophisticated neural interfaces.

The Problem of Agency in an Existential Vacuum

Truly in a world without work, with UBI in place, it will take a new "mindset" and value system to lead productive lives. It will fuel more social entrepreneurship, more ecological ventures, more caring initiative in society.

UBI should not be thought of as a welfare state system, but as a means to ensure undue suffering won't occur. Remember, with EdTech, 3D-printing and health-care all "available" at home, people won't need to rely on the state in quite the same way.

Work Must Transform to Adapt to Slower Global Growth

Economists believe in full employment. Americans think that work builds character. But what if jobs aren’t working anymore? We may have to collectively learn how to "let go".

Employment is a Failure in Quality of Life for Many American Citizens

• A fourth of the adults actually employed in the US are paid wages lower than would lift them above the official poverty line.
• Income inequality is getting substantially worse, while participation rates in the labor force (more relevant than "unemployment rates") show a sharp decline.
• U.S. debt is set to surpass 20 trillion and will do so in 2017.
• Almost half of employed adults in this country are eligible for food stamps (most of those who are eligible don’t apply).

#FutureOfWork #BigIdeas #Retail #Advertizing #BigData #Analytics #Innovation #FutureRunDown #Disruption

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Final Questions We'll be Asking Ourselves

This leads to the real question regarding the future of work, one that you (if you are a Millennial) and your children will have to ask in your lifetime:

What would you do if you didn’t have to work to receive an income?