Harry A. Patrinos:How we can prepare students for the automated working world

από το World Economic Forum

Depending on to whom you listen, automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence (AI) will either solve all our problems or end the human race. Sometime in the near future, machine intelligence is predicted to surpass human intelligence, a point in time known as “the singularity.” Whether the rise of the machines is an existential threat to mankind or not, I believe that there is a more mundane issue: robots are currently being used to automate production.

Economist Richard Freeman argues that robots can be a substitute for workers, even highly skilled professionals. In addition, MIT professors Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee suggest that, as computers get more powerful, companies have less need for some kinds of workers. A bigger impact can be felt in developing countries. If computerization makes high-income countries more self-sufficient—less offshoring and more “reshoring”—then developing countries may lose their wage advantage. Besides slowing employment growth, automation may also increase income inequality. Technological disruption is widely being debated in industrialized, high-income countries; however, policymakers in developing countries need to start worrying about the impact of automation as well.

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