subject: Automation of Jobs and Employment Law [print this page] Automation of Jobs and Employment Law Automation of Jobs and Employment Law
In the short term, high unemployment drives down wages. In the very long term, mechanization will drive wages down even further for most jobs as everything that can be automated will be automated. How will UK Employment Law adapt?
What can be automated will be automated. Laws may stop aggressive automation. The only areas in which this will not happen is where UK Employment Law limits the introduction of machines, such as at the behest of unions. What will be automated will depend on market demands. If humans don't want robots or machines performing a task, it won't be automated. For example, if UK Employment Law limits the introduction of automation specifically to protect human employment, the automation will not happen. Or, as has happened in the case of manufacturing moving to cheaper environs, the jobs will move abroad to where the tasks are automated, regardless of UK Employment Law. The only protection for human employment would be limits on the imports of artificially made goods or applying tariffs to protect hand-made or mostly human-made product. Human care, from elder care to childcare to counseling, will generally continue to be done by people. People prefer other people in these roles and do not trust machines in these jobs. So these jobs will not be automated. Human intelligence is frequently superior to that of machines. Even when machines are smarter, they will not get the final vote. From infrastructure design to computer system troubleshooting, design and problem solving will still employ elite humans trained at solving problems machines cannot figure out or to troubleshoot machines because their own logic is assumed affected if they are malfunctioning.
Education can be provided in some areas, such as rote learning, by computers. But curriculum design and tutoring on areas where people do not understand rote learning will be performed by people. Machines may issue tests, but people teach other people logical thinking and troubleshooting.
Entertainment is only a human concern. While machines may be able to do much of the work, such as building sets or digital worlds, people will want to innovate and replicate. And as machines drive down all forms of entertainment's costs, the cost of human entertainment (actors, models, music) will go down. This will increase the demand for human entertainment.
Infrastructure will remain a human domain. The need to employ many people with low skill sets in addition to human reluctance to have machines in their living and working spaces will keep humans employed in this area even when machines can theoretically do it as well. We will likely see more machines designed for the nastiest tasks (like cleaning sewers) and the nicer ones (gardening, ground-keeping) will be left to people.
