Robots are
poised to replace workers in many industries. But some professions can never be
automated away, and require investment, writes 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.
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 recognise 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.
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 recognise 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 sceptical 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. (Continue reading)
