Automation as opportunity

Running a technology company – impossible.com – for the last five years has given me the opportunity to watch from many angles, just how technology is affecting work, including the impact on jobs and how automation alters and sometimes replaces the workforce. One woman at Impossible, for example, worked on a lot of rather routine tasks – and so we changed her role into a bot, “NikaBot” – but she didn’t lose her job as a result. Rather, her role was elevated with the boring, more routine parts carried out by this bot, while she was able to spend time on more creative work. 

I agree with much of what the IMF and World Bank has said about the exaggerated fear of technology but, at the same time, we do have to acknowledge that it is a volatile and changing landscape. Even if jobs are not lost to automation, many will be effected by automation. So, people will need help with transition. That is why it is important that we consider people’s mental health in this environment, especially if they face redundancy or significant change within a job.  

There is a framework here for seeing automation as an opportunity. Throughout the industrial revolution, we were able to give machines the parts of work that were most routine and repetitive, allowing us to think about work as a more creative and engaging process. 

As part of this conversation we need to focus on changes needed to social security. Personally, I have an interest in Universal Basic Income, and have looked hard at various tests of UBI around the world. It is still early days and we haven’t had much data yet, but the results we do have show a positive impact for mental health. The main thrust of interviews conducted in Finland with people who had participated in their UBI experiment suggested it eased the mental health stress of unemployment, and made them more likely to set up their own businesses. 

It is significant that when people don’t have to go through an expensive and bureaucratic framework to prove they are unemployed or have a disability, they are more likely to have the capacity to be entrepreneurial. 

This post is a summary of Lily’s remarks at the APPG’s Future of Work and Inequality conference