Walked through the streets of San Francisco recently, I saw countless ads by tech industry, many of them for the tech industry. A company called Workato was responsible for one of the most eye-catching set of slogans: “Automate the W*RK out of invoicing.” “Automate the W*RK out of UX Design.” The notion that white-collar labor can be automated is deeply attractive to business leaders and stockholders, and just as anxiety-provoking for undergraduates worried that their future careers may be automated away. “The Future of Work” can seem exciting for many, but it is also threatening. In many parts of the world, including the United States, students have increasingly chosen careers in finance or coding for their stability. But as these ads suggest, even these jobs are at risk.

Much of the time, students feel pressured to adapt themselves to the vaguely defined future of work. But while they are being told they need to adapt their interests to that suppose future, they aren’t being told exactly how. Is there a better recipe for anxiety, or a sense of powerlessness? When the future of work is uncertain, a broad-based education such as that NTU-USP offers a sense of security. A single skill, or body of knowledge, can be automated or become obsolete. But learning a range of disciplines – and learning flexibility as a learner — helps us ensure that we always have something to offer.

At the same time, I like to encourage my USP students to be more than simply flexible units of human capital, ready to fit into any role the economy demands. First, I remind them of what should be obvious: human beings make the economy. Human beings as in you and me. We decide what work will look like in the future. All too often we talk about technological and economic change like they are tsunamis — natural forces over which we have no control. In reality, these changes are the product of decisions made by the powerful and less powerful.

There is an important implication for anyone trying to design a more useful university education. The technological changes we have heard so much – AI, machine learning, etc. — are not guaranteed to come about, or turn the world upside-down if they do. Plenty of counterevidence exists that technological breakthroughs are slowing down, not speeding up! (A cynical take: In some ways, AI may be seen as a response to that problem. Unable to match the technological progress of our predecessors, we dream that machines will carry on the pace of discovery and innovation for us, that they will “Automate the W*RK out of invention,” so to speak).

For this and other reasons, I urge my scholars not to choose their educational or career paths based on predictions that may or may not come to pass. There is no particular guarantee that learning any one particular subject or skill will help anyone survive the tsunami of economic and technological change. My opinion may be a controversial one, but I see no particular reason to think that such an event is in progress now, or imminent. Whether I am right or not, I firmly encourage students to make up their own minds about what the future of the world will look like. And I remind them that they help determine that. Rather than fit themselves into the future of the work, I urge them to make the future their work.

Submission by:

Dr Justin Clark

Assistant Professor, History

School of Humanities