Nearly half the 91原创 workforce could be displaced by robots or computers over the next two or three decades. That means eight million workers would lose their jobs.
Those figures sound farfetched. We certainly hope they are wrong.
But a growing number of studies have arrived at the same conclusion. Just as the industrial revolution decimated employment in traditional fields such as farming, automation is poised to have a similar impact.
Blue-collar jobs are most immediately threatened. A consortium of 91原创 and American companies wants to build a driverless truck route from Mexico to Canada. The economic benefits are obvious. Robot drivers don鈥檛 get tired or need rest stops.
And the technology is already being field-tested. By one estimate, automated trucks, buses and taxis could save the 91原创 economy $65 billion a year. Very interesting, but what happens to all the employees who lose their jobs?
There are 550 bus drivers in Victoria. Provincewide, more than 140,000 British Columbians earn their living behind the wheel of a commercial vehicle. Do we lay them all off?
White-collar jobs are also at risk. Financial analysts, data handlers, online marketers, indeed pretty well anyone crunching numbers for a living, can be replaced by a computer.
Even highly skilled professions can be handled by robots. One of the challenges physicians now face is the enormous amount of information available when diagnosing and treating an ailment. No human can assimilate it all. But machines can.
Working with a clinic in New York, an IBM computer called Watson diagnosed lung cancer correctly 90 per cent of the time. Doctors have an accuracy rate of only 50 per cent.
Some economists say not to worry. Yes, the industrial revolution caused an upheaval, but in the end, it created more jobs than it killed. The same will happen with automation.
That is certainly one possible outcome, although it will be cold comfort to those who get fired. But is it the most likely?
The mechanization that produced the 19th-century steel mill or the 20th-century assembly line replaced only the most crude forms of physical labour. Perhaps five to 10 per cent of our skill sets were rendered obsolete by those innovations. That gave us the freedom to create huge new fields of production and employment. It also improved quality of life.
But computers and robots have the capacity to replicate 鈥� indeed, improve on 鈥� a much wider range of human potential. Artificial intelligence is growing in scope every day.
No one knows the ultimate outcome, but if 50 per cent of workers are indeed displaced by machines, the result would be catastrophic.
Yet what can be done? If Canada slowed the pace of automation to protect jobs, a good number of those jobs would get up and leave.
That鈥檚 not an excuse for ignoring the issue. There are plenty of fields that don鈥檛 face offshore competition. If B.C. Transit decided to protect those 550 bus drivers in Victoria by refusing to automate, their jobs would stay here.
But some broader thinking is required. Humans, by our nature, need to be occupied. Employment is more than a source of income, it sustains our sense of self-worth.
The industrial revolution brought with it the realization that mechanized workplaces had to be regulated. Child labour and unsafe conditions were outlawed.
Automated work sites require regulations of a different order 鈥� to protect the very notion of employment. Killing jobs might be profitable. But so was child labour, and yet we put a halt to it for reasons that had nothing to do with money, and everything to do with morality.
There has been virtually no discussion about the ethical boundaries of automation. That needs to change.
