Welcome to Ask an Adviser, EBN’s weekly column in which benefit brokers and advisers answer (anonymous) queries sent in by our readers. Looking for some expert advice? Please submit questions to askanadviser@arizent.com. This week, we asked Arran Stewart, co-founder and chief visionary officer of blockchain-powered recruitment platform Job.com, to weigh in on the following: How do we prevent the displacement of workers from AI?
The displacement of workers due to artificial intelligence (AI), automation and robotics is unavoidable. We must accept that certain job roles that exist today will become redundant in the future. Companies simply cannot and will not keep people working in roles that technology can handle at a greatly reduced cost.
As a collective, what we need to do is think of sensible ways of reskilling, training and redeploying workers who are subject to displacement. It’s important that we examine and learn from historic mistakes, such as worker displacement in the Rust Belt. There is plenty of data showing what happened to local economies and communities when workers from that part of the country were not repurposed into other opportunities. We, as a society, owe it to those workers who were displaced in the past to learn from those mistakes and not repeat them.
Read more: How to use AI to eliminate bias — not perpetuate it
While there are plenty of growth markets that could absorb these workers, it should be the responsibility of local, state and federal governments to invest in these workers with the appropriate training they’ll need to reskill into other available fields or jobs of the future.
Private companies and government officials should be working together to forecast these changes, the workers that will be affected and the number of projected displacements over the next decade. These efforts will ensure that the appropriate programs are already in place once the inevitable displacement does begin.
With careful planning, we are not doomed to repeat the past and the fears about displacement can be overcome. This is especially true if a well-thought-out plan is communicated and delivered to those whose jobs are most at risk. There is no reason why those workers can’t be taken on a journey toward realignment with reskilling and why they can’t find a new, bright future filled with opportunity.
