The problems I brought up in my last post were essentially loss of jobs due to technology, and the conflict between an employer’s expectations and the employee’s. In some ways these were problems even before the fears that technology would take our jobs away started to become more serious.
My solution to the problem of lack of jobs due to technology is widespread access to education and inspiration. While technology is quickly becoming able to complete tasks that we once thought were reserved for humans, humans are still very capable of creation, innovation, and discovery. As current jobs decrease in number as they are replaced by artificial intelligence, people will need the drive and inspiration to create new ones, and the intelligence to actually be able to accomplish those jobs. If the in the future all jobs really will be taken by machines, then we need people that can look boldly in the face of such a realization and be prepared to create a society in which work for humans is no longer necessary; one in which discovery and leisure are what we spend all our time doing instead of only a fraction of our free time. This makes the inspiration and drive component even more important than education. The level of creation and re-imagination required for such a task cannot be met if people of the future are too busy despairing over the fact that the job pool has been saturated with machines and are unable and too close-minded to think of new solutions to new problems.
Making education widely accessible isn’t as simple as making college free for everyone. That approach can actually have negative effects. Instead, focus should be placed on improving already existing education systems at all levels, and teaching students to implement actual problem solving long before they get to college instead of making them learn facts without much question and not really showing how they can be applied in real life. Parents and teachers will need to help foster inspiration and drive in students by making children see at an earlier age what a good education can make them capable of. As technology improves education, education should become cheaper, and thus the amount of people who have access to quality education should increase.
Most of the solutions I found for the conflict between employer’s expectations and employee’s quality of life ultimately still involve flexible work hours. The solution to the problem seems to really just be changing people’s mindset about work. Essentially, replace the current “9 to 5” mindset with one that is more similar to college classes, where you have the option of picking class hours to better fit your schedule.
Sources:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ccap/2014/10/03/there-is-not-such-thing-as-a-free-college-education/2/
https://hbr.org/2014/12/flex-time-doesnt-need-to-be-an-hr-policy
