The leading global maître-à-pensers have discussed the theses of the latest book by Erik Brynjolfsson e Andrew McAfee, two economists/scientists from the MIT Center for digital business. From Thomas Friedman of the “New York Times” to Larry Summers, from the “The Economist," to martin wolf of the “Financial Times” have all intervened on several occasions to validate the analysis and remedies outlined in the book. Undoubtedly The Second Machine Age, preceded by a seminal study also translated into Italian taste, it's a book that leaves its mark. Why? Because she says things a lot unpleasant that we don't want to hear, like a bad diagnosis from the doctor.
In the second age of machines, those cognitive and not just tools, there is less room for human labor: I'offering of work is hopelessly top to the question and there is no way to fill this gap with Keynesian or monetarist policies. Or rather, there is a misalignment between the skills required by the market and those possessed by those who lose or seek work. Their professions are now carried out by intelligent hyper-connected machines which are also where one would never have expected to find them such as driving a car or in an operating room.
So, it's not just about generic, repetitive or low-skilled jobs: the machines are starting to do the job better than man tasks where decisions need to be made, thus subtracting them from the middle class which is the backbone of the economies of developed countries and the linchpin of their democracies.
The only professions that the centrifugal force of automation cannot suck up are those that require empathy, creativity, relationship, negotiation and leadership skills.
Technology improves human life
Should we worry a lot then? Not that much because, as all previous industrial revolutions have shown, the technology improves human life and sooner or later society manages to find a balance. Robots can sit in the backseat in the new machine age as long as they can to broadcast to the people new skills, i.e. the skills that are necessary in this new social and economic context. It is a task that school, training and everything that revolves around knowledge, including books, can carry out. L'lifelong education, that is practiced in all ages of a person's working life, becomes the most important lever to look to the future with serenity. It is an investment that everyone must take into account: individuals, families, businesses and governments.
Below we publish a speech by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee which also appeared in the "Financial Times” of January 22, 2014 with the title “Robots stay in the back seat in the new machine age”.
On the same issues we also point out a long interview by Massimo Gaggi of the "Corriere della Sera" with the two authors published in the "La Lettura" spine on February 16, 2014.
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Smart machines
It's easy to be pessimistic about jobs and wages these days. An increasing number of tasks are automated by ever more powerful, performing and pervasive technologies.
Not only can computers transcribe and translate human language, but they can also understand and execute elementary instructions quite well. Today the machines interpret huge amounts of unstructured information, identify patterns and draw inferences better than any highly skilled and experienced individual. Some recent developments are there for all to see: self-driving cars, drones, robots that accompany workers in factories, warehouses and automated campaigns.
These innovations they are out of the labs to enter the real economy, with new challenges for workers, from accountants to those who prepare hamburgers in McDonald's. Many have come to the conclusion that the technological unemployment and at the end arrived. For these observers, the work trends found in many countries, such as declining real wages, social mobility, growing inequality and persistence of high unemployment are undergoing aacceleration as technology advances.
The teachings of others industrial revolutions
But the world is not yet ready to give up human labor. Humanity is entering a second machine age. The first, resulting from the industrial revolution, was mechanical; this is digital. The first increased the muscles, the second our mind.
History does not repeat itself, but it certainly contains clues and give them successive waves of the industrial revolution mechanics we can draw some courses for our time. The first decades of the 20th century are particularly significant. At that time, electricity, the internal combustion engine and other innovations transformed theindustry. John Maynard Keynes and others interpreted them as a vehicle for technological unemployment.
Rather than towards unemployment, these innovations drive the demand for a different type of worker, those who use the head to complement or replace the hands and shoulders.
Many companies answered this question investing in training. The United States invested heavily in it and it is no coincidence that even today they excel in productivity and standard of living.
Parallel to the entrepreneurs they invented whole new industries that attracted this new workforce. Skilled workers found they could ask higher wages to be spent on a wide variety of goods and services to complement this virtuous circle. Instead of technological unemployment, the postwar years saw the birth of a large, stable and wealthy middle class.
The lesson is clear: the Industrial Revolution began as a race between education and machines – and for most of the XNUMXth century, humans led the race.
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