THE ROBOTS ARE TAKING OVER

photo courtesy: gamingintel.com

INEVITABILITY

Whether we like it or not this was the road the planet was heading to since the dawn of the industrial revolution and just like the beginnings of it, it carries with it some pros (mostly for the producing class) and cons which are heavily on the side of the working class. In today’s parlance it’s dubbed: THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION by the WEF - World Economic Forum and other experts or the guys you see on TV getting paid a whole bunch for flapping their gums and sounds come out. Those guys.

 It’s with this in my mind and also with the rollout of the thing already happening in the world around us, that we’ll be checking it out in this entry. Also, this post is not about promoting robophobia although to be honest there's a degree of apprehension in me about bots and botnets and the internet of things.

WHAT IT IS IN A NUTSHELL

The fourth industrial revolution/ Industry 4.0/ 4IR involves the onslaught of automation in the manufacturing and service industries. With it of course it means just like in The second industrial revolution where many roles involved the on-hand availability of many manual labourers as was the norm in The first industrial revolution – which were mostly rendered redundant by the new mechanizations and standardizations – this 4IR will be and is putting many an employed heads on the chopping block as well.

Don’t worry about the third industrial revolution, it pretty much started after the invention of the semiconductors in 1949 or there about and it brought it the digital aspect of human life on earth over the latter half of the 20^th century.

With brutally short explanations out of the way, let’s get into the meat and potatoes of this one shall we?

HOW IT AFFECTS THE JOB MARKET

For every player in every industry to survive, they’ll to dip their toes into this tech ooze or risk going extinct. This on the other hand means many of their workers and even departments will be replaced by some tech software or some kind of app or a robot depending on the role one’s involved in.

The 4IR is very beneficial mostly to the higher ups in organizations because they won’t have any costs incurred with lost man hours due to illnesses or some emergencies , no need to provide medial cover for their bots, the ability to boost productivity by longer working hours of their automatons has jumped through the roof and all that fun stuff.

On the other side of the coin what’s the human worker supposed to do?

HOW TO GET EVEN

Well, the following is just me spit-balling on what we can do when (not if) we find ourselves competing with AI (Artificial Intelligence) in the job market.

o   Get more tech savvy.

Since we cannot beat the inevitable, we need to learn more and more about the emerging tech-sphere and find out where we can fix ourselves within it. This would involve seeking new tech based skills so that we are relevant and valuable in the world today.

o   Look for alternative income sources

This is pretty much inevitable and I’ll look into it more on another post here but more governments in the world are looking to implement the UBI

Universal Basic Income where the citizens are assisted through a social security program by giving the people a stipend every month to live on so that people do not go hungry,

o   Getting into the service industry

There are certain emerging industries associated with the 4IR and these would involve you getting a driving licence because of all the driving and motorbike delivery services popping up. So acquiring that driving and riding skill- whilst still viable- will keep you employed a little bit longer.

In other sectors such as the hotel and related industries would get you fed for a while.

PS

Self-driving vehicles will replace you soon within the coming 2 decades

o   Acquire technical skills Through TVETs (Technical and Vocational Education and Training)

This is just like the measure above but with the context of a developing economy like the one in Kenya, one needs to get technical training on what are categorized as blue collar jobs. Examples could be in training to operate heavy machinery use in major construction projects like bulldozers , cranes and such , being a forklift operator, getting into masonry and carpentry as well as getting trained in welding skills, artisanry and such marketable skillsets – Also note that automation will completely take over these jobs over the next 2 decades.

This discussion is not as exhaustive and conclusive due to the dynamics of today’s job market. Plus this blog post is too long for many of us millennials or Gen-Zs to have read to this point. I’ll be posting related aspects of it in at least two more entries this week.