If you’re worried that a machine is going to take over your job, don’t fret, because your next job just doesn’t exist yet.
According to a Dell Technologies report titled ‘The Next Era of Human and Machine Partnerships’, an estimated 85 per cent of jobs in 2030 haven’t been invented yet. It takes a look at how emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics, virtual reality, augmented reality, and cloud computing will change every single person’s life over the next decade.
“The idea that 85 per cent of jobs in the future haven’t been invented yet tells you what a gap there is in terms of our understanding of where we are today, and our understanding of how much help customers are going to need to get from point A to point B,” said Gaurav Chand, senior vice president of marketing at Dell over the phone with ITBusiness.ca.
The idea is that these emerging technologies will ‘recast’ the relationship humans have with machines. Aspects like eliminating mundane tasks will in turn create new jobs that we don’t know about. The report says humans will act as ‘digital conductors’ where technology will work as an extension of people.
Chand points to the smart assistant devices like Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Google Home as disrupting how we live at home. He points to how these digital platforms that exist to orchestrate human and physical pieces are still growing.
“One simple example is how Amazon and Google have entered the home with AI,” said Chand. “All those mundane tasks that humans have had to do in the past are going to be taken away and replaced by machines, and humans will have to be the coordinators of all the stuff that is available to them through AI and machine learning.”
With the elimination of these mundane tasks, the jobs we have now will not only change, but some will also be eliminated. The idea that 85 per cent of jobs in 2030 haven’t been invented just means that the landscape will look very different, not that technology will take over for humans. Chand says that this is no different than previous technological advances.
He points to the previous jobs of legacy infrastructure like server, storage, and network admins, and how the rise of converged and hyper-converged infrastructure eliminated the need for those jobs, but then in turn created the need for new converged and hyper-converged admins. Various positions will certainly become nonexistent, but new positions will rise in their stead.
“We’ve seen that happen in the last five to seven years in the same way when you look at AI and software development. 85 per cent of those jobs literally don’t exist today, and in a lot of cases we don’t even know what those jobs are,” said Chand. “The report points to that fact that yes, the actions and jobs are going to go away, and then the population is going to have to learn a new skill set in order to embrace them and make themselves competitive in the future.”
Advancements in areas like software, big data, and processing power will reshape human lives without a shred of doubt, but that doesn’t mean those advancements are going to replace humans entirely. It will be up to humans to learn those new skill sets, adapt, and to be flexible and agile, and for business to help perpetuate that.
“It’s one of the only pieces that I have seen that’s not doom and gloom, you know, machines take over and humans become a non-entity. We don’t believe that to be true, and the research does not believe that to be true. Instead, the notion is that the tasks that we are used to doing today are going to be replaced by tasks of the future, some of which we know, and some of which we have yet to discover,” Chand said.
The Next Era of Human-Machine Partnerships report was created alongside 20 Institute for the Future (IFTF) technology, academic, and business experts. You can read the full report here.