“Do the digital revolution in business, technological advances and the increasing use of robots destroy more jobs than they create?” asks Franck in
ADVERTISEMENT“Do the digital revolution in business, technological advances and the increasing use of robots destroy more jobs than they create?” asks Franck in Brussels.
Per Strömbäck, editor of “Netopia“http://www.netopia.eu/, a forum for the digital society responds:
“Obviously this is not the first time that technology is accused of taking away jobs. Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt, who could not necessarily be accused of not getting digital technology, said last year ‘about the race between humans and computers that humans need to win’http://betanews.com/2014/01/24/eric-schmidt-warns-of-a-war-between-computers-and-humans-he-hopes-humans-win/!
So his point is that the speed of change is faster this time, and it might be more difficult for humans and society to adjust. This is the challenge. Other people have pointed too that some jobs may be replaced by robots. Others, like gardening, hairdressing, sales jobs for example can be very difficult to replace by robots. So there are shades of grey to this phenomenon.
But one thing is for sure: digital technology brings in many cases productivity increases. But it is up to the owners of the company, the managers of the company, and us as a society, to decide how we use those productivity increases. We can use them for rationalization that takes away jobs, we can use them for investments, for better training, or for new offers etc…
So there are choices to be made within the company. It is not the “laissez-faire” attitude; ‘old jobs go away, new jobs will come’. It is more a question of responsibility and choice. This is an opportunity and we can decide what we do with it.“concludes Strömbäck .
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