What does the future look like?
Ha, what does it look like?
We’ll be sleeping in tubes and flying cars, ah-
OK, here’s a more specific question:
How will the future of work be different for women and men?
Well we’re about to see a new wave of intelligent machines
primarily due to advances in the field of artificial intelligence.
These new technologies-
Advanced robotics, advanced materials, artificial intelligence-
Mean that machines are going to be able to go to work.
In fact, nearly half of all U.S. jobs are at risk of being automated in the next 20 years.
Automation can lead to both losses of jobs and changes in skill sets.
Robots and machines are going to be particularly good at tasks
that involve visual perception or physical activity.
They’re not typically going to be good at person to person interaction
or where you have to understand people’s emotions or intentions.
So Kaplan has this interesting idea: that the age of automation
is actually going to be worse for men.
Now this is only true because we do have gender differences
in the various professions.
Of course whether this is nature or nurture is up for debate, but it’s true.
We might wish the world were different
but unfortunately that simply is a statistical fact.
You see a lot of the jobs that are held by men involve perception and manipulation,
and sometimes that’s in conjunction with physical strength or physical exertion
such as swinging a hammer or trimming a tree.
Overall, workers whose jobs involve manual or physical labor
are more concerned about being replaced by robots or other machines.
Take construction. 97% of construction workers are men.
And those are just the kinds of jobs that are likely to be replaced by various kinds of robots.
But robots are really bad at other kinds of tasks,
like anything that happens in a chaotic environment
or involves reading human emotions.
Care related work, whether it’s child care,
elder care, education, or healthcare, is still likely to remain very human.
And those are the types of jobs that tend to be dominated by women.
Like nursing. 87% of nurses are women.
If your job involves distracting a patient when you’re delivering an injection,
or guessing whether a crying baby wants a bottle or a diaper change
you don’t really have to worry that a robot is going to take your job
at least for the foreseeable future.
This shift is not just about specific jobs.
It’s about something much bigger -
about how automation and robots could change what we value.
What kinds of human skills and abilities do we begin to reward in our society?
You know one of the things people have been speculating on
is that more human skills are going to become more important.
So collaboration, creativity, ability to work with others,
to see connections between different trends.
Persuasion, or face to face interactions, or empathetic reactions to people,
those are the skills that are going to be more important in the future.
Men have traditionally been better at linear thinking
as opposed to webbed thinking. And so they’re likely to be more disadvantaged
at not having exercised that particular skill set.
To some degree men as a class will have to adapt to the kinds of jobs
that’ll be available in the future.
It doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
Currently, American women spend 30 more minutes per day on household tasks than men do,
and the World Economic Forum says that automation of these tasks could relieve this burden.
So with less housework and more flexible hours,
how might the balance of power between genders change?
To the extent that the job skills of men are less valuable in the future,
and the job skills of women are more valuable,
that obviously shifts the balance in a family and as to who ought to be out working,
In this version of the future, men could find that they’re most valuable working in the home.
There are also huge changes in the aspiration of women themselves.
And so in my view, we will see more women going into the workforce,
taking advantage of the ability to work flexibly and from the home,
we will see a premium being placed on care professions,
and the natural advantage that women have so far had in collaboration and creativity,
they’re also going to win out because of that.
it’s going to give them a greater currency for negotiating the balance of power if you will.
The coming wave of automation is likely to empower women
in ways that they are not empowered today.
Automation and the rise of artificial intelligence intersects with a lot of things.
There are still very real barriers to women in the global workforce.
But wouldn’t it be exciting if automation did usher in
unique and important opportunities for women to excel,
if it reshaped the division of labor at home and narrowed the gender gap once and for all?
This thing just crapped out on me.
Give me a second.
I hate computers! You can put that in your piece.