NEWS FROM THE FUTURE: Taking the work out of jobs

Dateline: April 30 2029

It’s almost amusing to think that, just over a decade ago, people were worried automation would kill off jobs and leave workers destitute.

At the same time, tycoons such as Jack Ma were supporting the “996″ work ethic of ambitious young Chinese workers; that’s where you work from 9am to 9pm six days a week.

But then it dawned on management and staff that you can get more out of your talented employees with goal-directed work, with more time to reflect and refresh, than an exhausting schedule that leads to burnout.

The tipping point was reached with automation; robots and smart programs can do the drudge work, leaving company members free to follow more challenging ventures. Everybody wins, or they should.

Which is not to say the transition was painless. Many older staff were not keen to change careers and learn new tricks; often disgruntled, they shuffled off into early retirement. By the same token, young graduates found there were no jobs waiting for them, and they were forced into entrepreneurship to make ends meet.

But in the middle productivity soared as shorter work weeks promoted creative thinking and automation became increasingly reliable and accepted as the norm. With more leisure time and breathing space, purpose-driven employees can dramatically improve the innovation culture in a company.

Now company members at all levels are realising work is not equal to jobs, and being busy is not necessarily the key to good business. Finding and delivering value to customers is where real success in business lies, and the work necessary to achieve that can mostly be outsourced to machines.

That’s what robots are for — to take the work out of jobs. /First published in Mindbullets April 24 2019.

Roboearth taxes the machines

Dateline: July 3 2027

We’re living in the age of abundance. The age of the algorithm. The age of, well, automated utopia.

Who would have thought that this soon, with machines doing all the work, we would also have found the solution to technological unemployment? The point is, just as horses became unemployable with the invention of engines, so humans became unemployable in the age of seriously smart machines.

We call it “Roboearth”. When a robot arrives from the factory it is essentially lifeless; it can’t do anything useful. But once it is powered up and connected to the robot internet, it can find out from the cloud how to do anything. So it doesn’t need any programming.

Again comes the question: if we don’t need human programmers, and even the robots are designed by algorithms and built and maintained by robots, what do people do?

The solution was to tax the robots. Their labour tax goes towards providing everything humans need for their daily enjoyment of life. Sure, if you want something more than Roboearth normally provides you have to get up and get creative, really inventive, and invest in something even the algorithms haven’t thought of. Something analogue. Then you can charge your own form of “tax” on the machines.

For the rest of us, it’s, well, so simple. Or is it? Who’s really in charge here? Us or the machines? /First published in Mindbullets February 25 2015.

• Despite appearances to the contrary, Futureworld cannot and does not predict the future. The Mindbullets scenarios are fictitious and designed purely to explore possible futures, and challenge and stimulate strategic thinking.