Will Technology Create More Unemployment?

By:Katayon Qahir

(photo via google)

(Gainesville, GA) Three years after Google invented driverless cars in the US, California and other states are rewriting the rules of the road to make way for driverless cars. The question though remains that what happens to the large number of people who make a living driving cars and trucks. A computer scientist, Moshe Vardi at Rice University in Houston predicts “All those jobs are going to disappear in the next 25 years”.

Now it’s worth thinking that if automation can unseat bus drivers, urban delivery men, long­haul truckers, is any job safe? Does the technology lead to mass unemployment? To understand this better, we need to reflect to the past.

In the beginning of 1980s, at the early stages of personal computer age, economists thought computers would do what machines had done for two centuries ­ eliminate jobs that required brawn, not brains. Nevertheless, it hasn’t worked out that way. It turns out that computers most easily target jobs that involve routines, whatever skill level they require.

The most highly skilled workers, those who can use machines to be more productive but can’t be replaced by them, will continue to prosper. Many low­paying jobs are likely to remain sheltered from the technological take­over: of course robots are not capable of tidying up hotel rooms or clearing dirty dishes at busy restaurants.

At some level we can see that if technology has destroyed jobs, it has also always created jobs because in order to keep the technology progressing, human resources are greatly needed to be secured and utilized.