Canada is preparing to deal with the inevitable rise in job losses when automation hits Canada and the rest of the world like a tsunami wave.
Earlier this week Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau answered the following question on Quora, “What should governments do to prepare for the technological automation of human jobs?”
Trudeau said that they recognize automation will take even more jobs and instead of “resisting in vain” they will be focused on funding research and innovation for AI and quantum computing. In addition, they will help Canadians find new jobs through investments in education and training.
According to Oxford University, they forecast that Loan officers will be the first to be automated with a 98% probability of those jobs being automated. This is followed by receptionists, paralegals, retail salespersons, taxi drivers and even security guards.
For the unemployed in Canada, the budget plan for 2017 proposes to provide “$132.4 million over four years,” starting in 2018 and “$37.9 million per year thereafter” to help the unemployed to pursue self-funded training while still receiving unemployment benefits.
Others have suggested a solution to the automation job challenge is to develop a Universal Basic Income. Some have agreed. Some have not.
If we diver deeper into real estate related jobs, the study estimates that most real estate professional jobs have a high probability of being completely automated.
According to their estimates, about 47 percent of total US employment is at risk of being automated.
The great economist John Maynard Keynes in 1933 predicted widespread technological unemployment when he said, “due to our discovery of means of economising the use of labour outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labour.” With the new technological advances in quantum and nano computing, technological unemployment is accelerating at a rapid pace.
Is AI and automation inevitable? Will it take our jobs or do you agree with our current U.S. Secretary of Commerce Steve Mnuchin. In March 2017, when asked if AI will take our jobs, he said it is “not even on our radar screen…. 50-100 more years” away. “I’m not worried at all” about robots displacing humans in the near future, he said, adding: “In fact I’m optimistic.”
What do you think?
