From the course: DJ Patil: Ask Me Anything

How can we address the fear of machines taking jobs?

From the course: DJ Patil: Ask Me Anything

How can we address the fear of machines taking jobs?

(upbeat music) - [Interviewer] And another type of fear I've seen a lot is that machines are going to take our jobs. How do you address something like that as a data scientist? - Well one of the things that we did have to do under the Obama administration and under the directives of the President was to directly ask how is data going to transform our society. Good, the bad, the ugly, all of it. Great opportunity, great challenges and there's a number of reports that the White House produced under the Obama administration that are public and I encourage people to go and download them. The parts of one of the ones that we produced is great opportunity, great risk. What is the good, the bad that happened with it. Another one that came up as a result was this question around as AI was gaining popularity, as a term there's questions about sentience is when do we have to worry about this? Do we have to worry about it right now, what are the implications? And so we took a look at that and it isn't a concern that we have to have right at this moment around Skynet and sentient beings and those type of things but what we do have to be greatly concerned about is the broader arch of how automation and machines and AI are coming together with regard to job displacement. So just as we have with global trade policies and other things we are having a great shift in the way manufacturing is produced. But also at the same time we're seeing a wave of automation that is incredibly powerful but they are big consequences to the people who are in those jobs. Most of the time people love to talk about well what happens when self-driving cars become a reality what happens to those drivers. That's a good lens but there's many other cases that are happening far faster right now. The jobs of a bank teller. Not just a bank teller, turns out if you look at the jobs of the holistic bank, many of those jobs, because they're process one to process two to process three, with logic in between one of those, those are actually incredibly well suited for overall automation. Customer service centers, all of this. So how do we people transition, who are really great at those areas go to other domains. And there's estimates that are very high for many of them jobs that are what are referred to as minimal wage. Those could be all automated. In China, we're seeing that plants, where Foxccon and others have traditionally been known for having massive factory workers are moving to automation. And so what happens to those workers? So this isn't just a thing for the United States, this is a worldwide question overall of how do we address this and that problem is just similar like we had during the Industrial Revolution is one that's happening now. We have the answer the question of not what do we do with those people, what do we do for those people? Because we have to bridge them into the next set of industrial movements. (upbeat music)

Contents