Roger Moroney: Just one machine after another

Roger Moroney, staff reporter, columnist, Hawke's Bay Today. 21 January 2016 NEWS Hawke's Bay Today Photograph by Duncan Brown. HBG 22Mar16 - HBG 29Mar16 - HBG 05Apr16 - HBG 12Apr16 -&

Once upon a time if you happened to mention the future time of 2025 you kind of just dismissed it because those sort of dates and times were only plausible when mentioned in a futuristic sci-fi movie.

Just too far away.

Too unreal to consider and ponder.

Although when 1999 morphed into 2000 you started to wonder about what lay ahead.

But 2025 was just too way ahead to think about.

But that did not prevent the usual agencies and manufacturers and organisations making calculated predictions about what was likely to be happening in the "distant" year of 2025.

Such predictions were put aside as they were too "out there" and the year of 2025 was too far away to think about anyway.

There would be a growing fleet of vehicles being powered by electricity and private rocket flights to the moon would be on the cards.

And "mega-storms" would begin to ravage vulnerable parts of the planets as temperatures in the air and water got out of synch.

Oh yeah, and people with virtually no grasp of the concepts or history of politics could lead the world's greatest nations.

Yeah right.

Too far away to worry about.

But here we are, in the grand year of 2018 and that "far away" time is edging unsettlingly clear.

I use the unsettling angle because the World Economic Forum (whoever they are and whatever they do) issued a report last week (yep, another 'report') and it highlighted the rapid pace at which the labour market is changing.

But then everything is changing and all the changes seem to taking place at pace.

What the economy forumers have declared is that in less than seven years, as 2025 dawns, machines and robotic devices will be carrying out about 52 per cent of the labour force requirements.

At this very point that figure is running at around 29 per cent and even that sounds high.

That's more than a quarter of all work being handled by machines.

And in just seven years that will be around half.

So what about 2035 then?

Don't want to think about that ... nor I daresay would the World Economic Forum delegates as by that stage machines will likely be running their show.

I thought about this whole scenario and figured it was all a tad extreme, because you can't take away the excellent retail counter staff and put machines in their place.

And an hour later I was passing a couple of items across the scan thing at the automatic check-out.

But hey, if they ever play up they can't repair themselves.

They need the human touch.

Although, according to the foruming eco-World report thing I came across a segment of it which stated that by 2022 (and crikey, that's only four years away) roughly 75 million jobs would be lost throughout the world.

That's a lot of jobs.

A lot of income.

I hope the machines spend it wisely.

But then, as I read on, I came across a section which rather optimistically stated that this great loss of jobs would be offset by the creation of 133 million new jobs.

Yep, 133 million new jobs.

But what it didn't explain was exactly what those jobs were likely to be — except to say it would a "major challenge" in training and re-training employees for the "new world of work".

I can only assume this new world of work will indeed revolve around catering to the requirements of the machine work force.

Oilers, greasers, electricians, programmers ... whatever.

Automation, the report says, will create new roles.

But that doesn't really make sense, because I assumed the whole point of automation was to reduce the costs of a human workforce.

So the machines take more than half the labour market but new job numbers will rise significantly.

I'll stick to reading the sports news in future ... at least the robots can't take those on-field and track roles ... can they?

Oh, and while steering an accelerating course to the future, the first privately operated rocket capable of carrying humans, is scheduled to blast off in 2023, with six to eight artists, designers and other creative people on a week-long journey out around the moon and back again.

The passengers can then use what they saw and experienced to create artworks and things to reflect what they saw.

That's only five years away, so hey, if you start saving now you could get a seat aboard.

Me?

No thank you.

My feet will remain firmly on the ground for their will be lots of machines down here which will need cleaning.