There is growing concern about all the white-collar jobs that will disappear with the spread of machine learning and AI. It gets me thinking about slide rules.
The connection is that innovation causes disruptions, then our work and our lives become more productive and interesting. Artificial intelligence is shaking up the job market and will do so for a long time, but there will be many positive developments to counterbalance the negatives. To keep things in perspective it can be helpful to look back on our own experiences with technological change.
The first time I became aware of this ‘disruptive / productive’ dynamic was during my high school years back in the 1970s. At my school, we had a group of very intelligent classmates who populated the calculus and physics classes and dreamed of becoming engineers and astronauts and airline pilots.
My friends and I referred to them as ‘the Slide Rule Gang’ because they were never without their mechanical analog computers. We teased them a bit about their slide rule holsters and their pocket protectors, but we also admired their brains, their discipline and their ambition. These kids were smart.
And they really loved their slide rules. That is, until the hand-held electronic calculators began to appear at the local Radio Shack. (For those unfamiliar with Radio Shack, imagine an Apple Store for your grandparents. Radio Shack didn’t have the cool vibe, but back in the day it was the place for kids to find the newest technology).
Those early hand calculators from Japan seemed as big as shoe boxes — it was the 1970s and miniaturization was in its infancy — but our Slide Rulers embraced them overnight. When I asked one of the guys how he could be so quick to abandon his favorite computational ‘toy’, he had a ready answer for me: “I can do twice the work in half the time, and that lets me focus on the interesting stuff.”
It turned out that the calculators briefly disrupted things for the Slide Rule Gang, then allowed them to work smarter and faster. Disruption, then greater productivity and more interesting work.
That explanation came back to me several years later when I was writing for my university newspaper. I began working as a reporter in 1979 in an old-fashioned newsroom, complete with clacking typewriters and messy carbon paper to make copies. By the time I graduated in 1982 the entire newspaper was being produced on noiseless word processors, and carbon paper was a messy, fast-receding memory.
It turned out that the word processors briefly disrupted the newsroom, then allowed the reporters and editors to work smarter and faster. As with the calculators, disruption quickly led to greater speed, scope, and productivity.
I could go on with tales of fax machines, personal computers, and financial spreadsheets, but you’ve already seen the point: innovations lead to the disruptions, then we become more productive and our work can become even more interesting.
This is the pattern we can expect to see with machine learning and artificial intelligence. We are beginning to feel the impact of these developments in the workplace, and there is no question that some attractive jobs will disappear as their tasks are taken over by machines.
But it is also certain that new fields, specializations and even professions will emerge as a result of AI, and that is an exciting prospect. Innovation has been inspiring creativity and generating employment for people for thousands of years, and it isn’t going to stop now.
So that is the AI forecast for today: widely-scattered disruption, followed by greater productivity and an even more interesting world. Stay tuned.
Data Driven Investor
Data Driven Investor (DDI) brings you various news and op-ed pieces in the areas of technologies, finance, and society. We are dedicated to relentlessly covering tech topics, their anomalies and controversies, and reviewing all things fascinating and worth knowing. DDI has only one mission: see what is coming, and do what is important – “NOW”.
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Dr. Justin S P Chan has a passion for clarity and synergy - seeing through the complexity of the intersecting spheres of technology, finance, innovation and social dynamics, to enable game-changing collaborations between entrepreneurs and innovative opportunities. Combining the vision of a true inventor and entrepreneur with his data-driven, evidence-based approach to investment, Justin also co-founded OCIM and serves as Chief Investment Officer for its fund management platform. Within OCIM, He co-manages OC Horizon Fintech, a transformational hedge fund, where he blends real applications, expertise and future-awareness into truly exceptional investment performance. Justin gains inspiration for these projects from his global network of contacts in investment and fintech communities, where he stays on the pulse of fast-moving conversations and trends affecting global markets and emerging technologies.
John DeCleene is a fund manager for OCIM’s fintech fund, and currently progressing towards becoming a CFA charter holder. He loves to travel for business and pleasure, having visited 38 countries (including North Korea); he represents the new breed of global citizen for the 21st century. Whilst having spent a lot of his life in Asia, John DeCleene has lived and studied all over the world - including spells in Hong Kong, Mexico, The U.S. and China. He graduated with a BA in Political Science from Tulane University in 2016.
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