Ron Colone: A closer look at technology and jobs – Santa Ynez Valley News

A TV commercial said, Get the car without the car salesman! It was an ad for some new car-buying app enabling people to buy cars online.

It kinda made me sick, to tell you the truth. I dont see whats so great about eliminating people and eliminating jobs, but I realize thats what technology does. Its nothing new. Its been that way since the invention of the wheel.

We can blame job loss on the global economy or on outsourcing or trade policies, but as big if not a bigger reason than any of those for the loss of jobs is technological advance.

The examples are all around us the rise in online sales resulting in a reduction of sales people, voicemail systems that eliminate the need for an actual human to answer phones, ATMs and online banking that get rid of bank tellers, self-checkout stands that replace cashiers, online travel sites that have supplanted the need for travel agents, hotel desk clerks, airlines and rental car agents, and more.

In 1962, President Kennedy said if we have the talent to invent machines that put people out of work, we also have the talent to put people back to work, but a report released earlier this year by PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts that four out of 10 U.S. jobs will be replaced by robots and artificial intelligence over the next 12 years.

The tendency is to think its only unskilled blue-collar jobs that are threatened by technology, but as Jerry Kaplan, author of Humans Need Not Apply and a longtime Silicon Valley veteran who now teaches at Stanford Law, notes that technology is blind to the color of your collar.

Medical doctors have long been regarded as one of the most specialized, highly skilled and prestigious of professions, but even they are being replaced. To date, more than 2 million surgical procedures have been performed by ultraprecise robotic surgeons, for everything from knee replacements to vision correction. Computers can now diagnose cancers more reliably than humans, an increasing number of hospitals are utilizing automated, robotics-controlled pharmacies and the FDA approved a device that delivers anesthesia automatically, no anesthesiologist required.

Other professions threatened by technology include: financial services in which 61 percent of the jobs are likely to be lost to computers, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the insurance industry, architecture, journalism, marketing and advertising, teaching, lawyers and paralegals, and even law enforcement.

The Boston Consulting Group predicts by 2025 a quarter of the jobs currently available in the U.S. will be replaced by software or robots, while an Oxford University study, The Future of Employment, declared 47 percent of American workers are in jobs that are at high risk of being replaced by automation and computerization.

Im not frightened by the prospect. I think it would be amazing if we could spend more of our time and energy on our lives, loved ones, health, communities, passions and our bliss. It would entail a major philosophical shift and some sort of basic means of sustenance.

Technology giants like Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Mark Cuban all agree if computers replace humans who are taxed on the work they do and the earnings they generate, the owners of those computers must also be taxed on the work they do and the earnings they generate, and that money should be distributed to people as a basic living wage.

In this country, living wage are fighting words, and it brings us to the basic division between liberals and conservatives.

Regardless of your views, its time to ask what are we going to do when the jobs go away, knowing that in any technological shift, the first generation is always left out in the cold.

Original post:

Ron Colone: A closer look at technology and jobs - Santa Ynez Valley News