The rise of robots, algorithms, and machine learning will free us humans from mandatory labor. Finally, we will be able to enjoy life without work. We need to prepare the next generation for this era of creativity and surplus of free time and teach them life skills instead of career skills.
Like all humans, I am lazy. We are constantly looking for tools to reduce actual labor; for centuries, we have been replacing human labor with machines. This way we can leave the repetitive tasks for the machines and leave us with time to spend on specialized tasks, same for administrative tasks being replaced by computers. This kind of automation requires a specialized environment and preprogrammed solutions designed by a human mind. Advances in technology are making computing power cheap as we now have mechanical minds designed for decision making. In many fields, they are outcompeting humans for jobs.
Highly skilled jobs will be replaced by robots in the next 10 years
Today, artificial intelligence algorithms are able to write and publish news articles or process most of the voice calls in call centers, yet people using these services do not even notice the difference. Machine learning can grade papers by students or diagnose specific kinds of cancer with a higher rate of accuracy than actual teachers and medical doctors. A recent machine learning experiment successfully objected to 40.000 traffic violations, making real lawyers obsolete; therefore, it is not an illusion that these jobs will be done better by machines in the near future.
How do we prepare our kids?
We are making a huge mistake, still training our children’s career skills at school. This will not prepare them for the near future. All these skills, like algebra, science, languages, and chemistry, will become obsolete in the near future. It is time to rethink the way we are educating our future generation.
In 20 years, or even sooner, having a job will be optional because advances in technology
Artificial intelligence and robotics will make us, human resources, obsolete in the workforce. Robots will not only take over the manual production work, but they will also replace us as medical professionals, legal experts, and financial advisors. Big data analysis and algorithms will be able to make better judgments and decisions than human experts. This will free our children from effortless learning and help them acquire these career skills since there is simply no demand for judges, medical doctors, and engineers. Artificial Intelligence algorithms will take care of these dreadful tasks; only the humans who have an uncontrollable desire to study this will be learning these skills, probably for a hobby because it will never reach the skill level of the professional intelligent machines. Artificial intelligence robots will eventually optimize the economy and improve production capability in such a way that the concept of money will become obsolete. All products and services will be available in endless supply made from biodegradable and environmentally friendly materials. You see I am an optimist for this glorious future :-).
What are the things machines can’t do
Machine algorithms are good in working in situations where they can predict the outcome of a task based on a huge collection of historical data of past cases. This is also their weak spot, as they are bad in handling new and unpredictable situations.
Humans, on the other hand, are very good at responding to new situations and generating new ideas from these unforeseen actions. We need humans to stay focused on doing new and unpredictable work.
What next, what should we learn our kids
This is fantastic news, as every person has the choice to work or to enjoy life (or both) and this is the first time in history we can start to enjoy life from an early age onwards. We do not have to wait till we reach out retirement age and hope we saved enough money to enjoy. We start our retirement at birth and are able to enjoy life from the start.
This poses one big problem; are our kids prepared to enjoy life? Career skills will not help when you are not required to work anymore. We need a drastically different approach to education. To prepare the next generation for this and teach our kids Life Art skills.
New academic curriculum
I suggest we focus on teaching our children to enjoy life. That will be the best preparation for their future labor-free life. Adding the following courses would benefit any academic curriculum:
- Learn to enjoy being idle …. And enjoy the silence
- Cooking and experimenting with new food forms
- Enjoy painting and making freestyle music
- Talking to random strangers…. without any goal in mind
- Learn how to enjoy life in its simplest form. Go on a hiking trip with limited resources
- Combining ideas and experiment …And see what happens
Only by having these life skills are our future generations able to survive in the upcoming decade. So if you are this 17-year-old college graduate planning to start a career in medicine, law or accounting, please do consider your choice again. Are you really prepared to compete with an algorithm? Try at least to add something creative to the mix.
(images source:pixabay.com)
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