Automation Resistant Skills by Livia Gershon
Disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data
are changing the world of work. Retail jobs are disappearing in the US
while the online sellers supplanting them fill their warehouses with
robots instead of human workers.
In China, manufacturing
businesses that fled wealthy countries to find low-wage workers are now
replacing those humans with machines. And on farms around the world,
automated systems are beginning to take on backbreaking tasks like
weeding lettuce. Studies have found that new technologies threaten
around 40% of existing US jobs, and two-thirds of jobs in the developing
world.
New technologies threaten around two-thirds of jobs in the developing world.
There is one kind of job though, that is both indispensable and
difficult – perhaps impossible – to automate: the kind that requires
emotional skills. Artificially intelligent software is being built that
can recognize emotions in people's faces and voices, but it is a long
way from simulating genuine empathy, and philosophers have been arguing
for centuries that a machine with real feelings is impossible. Computers
are nowhere near being able to compete with humans on the ability to
really understand and connect with another human being.
As
populations in many countries age and non-communicable diseases grow,
the WHO says that the world will need 40 million new health workers by
2030.
If these jobs can’t be automated, and will continue to be
necessary into the future, workers with emotional skills will be highly
in demand in the coming decades. But, right now, the jobs that depend
most on these skills are often badly compensated: a Business Insider
poll put childcare workers and high school teachers in a list of the top
ten most underpaid professions.
Emotional skills include all the
abilities that let us recognize and respond appropriately to emotional
states in ourselves and others. They’re a ubiquitous, yet largely
invisible, part of a huge and perhaps surprising array of jobs. It’s the
supermarket cashier pleasantly asking how you’re doing. It’s a
supervisor correcting a subordinate’s mistake while making sure he still
feels valued and capable. It’s a salesman watching a potential
customer’s face to see if she’s skeptical about his pitch.
As
robots come for our routine jobs, the ability to work well with others
is becoming a key to success at work. A 2016 World Bank review of 27
studies of employers found that 79% of them ranked a socio-emotional
skill such as honesty or the ability to work within a team as the most
important qualification for workers.
Emotional skills are
particularly crucial in healthcare, where there’s an urgent need for
more workers. As populations in many countries age and non-communicable
diseases grow, the World Health Organization says that the world will
need 40 million new health workers by 2030 and we’re on course to fall
short by 18 million.
That figure includes highly educated doctors
and technicians, for whom a good bedside manner is complementary to
their technical skills. It also encompasses a wide range of workers
whose main qualification is being able to support and communicate with
patients.
Effective healthcare requires men and women who can
check in with diabetes patients to make sure they’re making crucial
lifestyle changes, talk about contraception with young adults, and
perform a million other tasks that require empathy, but not necessarily
advanced technical skills.
Education is another industry where
the need for emotional connection makes automation unlikely. Teaching
young children demands human engagement, in order to motivate students,
spot potential developmental problems and instil social skills. As it
turns out, that also appears to be true of adult education.
MOOCs, or massive open online courses, were once seen as a way to scale
higher education, letting anyone learn for free if they wanted to, but
they’ve proved something of a disappointment. Estimated completion rates
for MOOCs range from 4 to 15%.
The success rate is even worse
among less-educated young adults in poor communities, who advocates had
hoped MOOCs would benefit the most. In contrast, as sociologist Tressie
McMillan Cottom has found, for-profit colleges get first-generation
college students to enrol and stay engaged by hiring an army of warm,
engaging staff to offer personal support and guidance.
Hands-on
healthcare and education are irreplaceable, but the cost of an
empathetic, attentive care worker or special educator puts this type of
help out of reach for many. In most parts of the US, even standard
childcare for a family with a four-year-old and an eight-year-old costs
more than rent, and infant care is more expensive than a four-year
public college. Meanwhile, comprehensive home care for an elderly parent
typically runs to more than $45,000 a year, more than 80% of the median
household income.
It's almost impossible to replicate some of
the softer skills of a good teacher, for example spotting if a child has
social or developmental issues.
Already, large education and
health care systems receive much of their funding from government
sources. Primary and high schools are almost always publicly funded,
and, in many countries, early childhood education and college are too.
When it comes to healthcare, even in the US – where private businesses
play a large role in the industry – 64% of costs are ultimately borne by
the government. We could even pay a decent wage to stay-at-home
parents
As the world's population expands, and this population
continues to require good healthcare and education in order to thrive,
more money must be invested in emotional laborers, and their pay must
reflect the importance of their work. OECD data from across the
developed world has shown, for example, that higher teacher pay is
directly correlated to better student performance.
This is
already starting to happen. Despite limited financial resources,
government-funded programs are now hiring emotional workers for all
kinds of new tasks. They’re paying people with mental illness to work as
peer counselors, and investing in yoga and mindfulness instructors for
at-risk kids.
Could governments harness the cost savings from
automation, and use that money to invest in increasingly important
emotional jobs?
Governments are even paying people to do the
kinds of caring work that have traditionally been unpaid. Many European
countries now pay families with kids an annual allowance that can help
subsidize a parent who stays home or works part time. Some countries,
including England, Germany, and the Netherlands, as well as US states
like California, let people with disabilities use their public health
insurance to pay friends and family members to take care of them.
It would be possible to make this happen on a much larger scale in the
future, and to avoid devastating levels of unemployment and poverty, by
harnessing some of the soaring profits that will almost certainly come
from increased automation.
The rising importance of emotional
work is likely to affect most of us. Each of us can put effort into
sharpening our emotional skills as well as our technical ones. That
might mean reading an engaging book with characters you care about,
taking a restorative outdoor break to increase emotional resilience, or
just stopping to consider how your offhand comments are coming across to
your coworkers.
Automation has the potential to create enormous
worldwide wealth, and it’s vital that we channel some of this into work
that engages all of our human capacities, so that we can help each other
thrive.
