If drilling wood to make fire has opened a new page for human civilization, then the emergence of robots has changed the pattern of human control tools. Science and technology are approaching the various “limits” of nature step by step, ultra-high temperature, ultra-low temperature, ultra-vacuum, superconductivity, super strong magnetic field and so on…… Since Alphago defeated human beings, people’s discussion of artificial intelligence has become more and more heated. On October 20, the World Economic Forum reported that more than 85 million manual jobs will be replaced by machines by 2025, but the development of automation is also likely to create many new jobs.

01

The inevitability of human progress

6FC5347-0AF50-0BA0 Some routine and manual jobs in management and data processing will bear the brunt, but more jobs will emerge in nursing, big data and the green economy, the report said.

The World Economic Forum surveyed 300 of the world’s largest companies, which together employ nearly 8 million people worldwide.

More than 50 percent of employers surveyed said they would like to accelerate the automation of some roles within their companies. Forty-three percent of employers said they were likely to cut jobs for technical reasons.

At present, the technology of artificial intelligence, which is mainly based on data, can help us replace various production activities of people with various automated devices, thus improving the overall development efficiency of society.

Foxconn, one of the world’s largest electronics contract manufacturers, has announced the introduction of 1 million robots to replace human labor, in the mainland production base has deployed more than 40,000 robots, for a time, “Foxconn suspended recruitment”, “causing unemployment waves” and 6FC5347-0AF50-0BA0 other panic reports frequently appeared in the news, “man-machine war” has not begun, the war of words has been overwhelming opened round after round.

The world’s first robot citizen “Sophia” became a female robot with Saudi citizenship, becoming a citizen granted legal citizenship; In the first half of 2020, a total of 1,318 physical branches of commercial banks were closed across the country; Da Vinci surgical robot is relatively unknown to ordinary people, but it is the most widely used surgical robot system in the medical industry. It has entered major operating rooms……

Machines will replace humans more in harsh environments or in standardized production areas. As we all know, capital is profit-seeking, technology can maximize the goal of capital, technology and capital reflect a certain degree of isomorphism. As an effective resource allocation method, capital can maximize the allocation of resources in the best technical path.

02

Times of great changes in employment

In today’s rapid development of science and technology, the replacement of artificial equipment is staged every day.

Earlier, McKinsey has given a shocking data: in the case of rapid development of automation, by 2030, 800 million people in the world will be replaced by machines. In a relatively modest automation scenario, machines will replace 400 million jobs worldwide by 2030. Being replaced by machines does not mean mass unemployment, because new jobs will be created, and historical data shows that technology can create jobs.

6FC5347-0AF50-0BA0 The figure above shows the employment situation of the whole industry in the United States from 1850 to 2015. After the two industrial revolutions, the number of employment in agriculture, manufacturing and mining in the United States has decreased significantly, but the number of employment in trade, education and medical care has increased significantly. The impact of automation varies according to income levels, demographics and industrial structure in different countries. The labor market will adjust as technological change changes the demand for labor.

The new jobs generated on Ali’s platform have the typical characteristics of the era of data economy, they were born on the Internet, grow on the Internet, and are born out of the Internet feeding the offline real economy. Alibaba’s retail platform created 40.82 million jobs in 2018. The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the General Administration of Market Supervision and the Bureau of Statistics jointly issued 13 new occupations, among which, More than half of the new occupations, such as digital managers, artificial intelligence engineers and technicians, cloud computing engineers and technicians, Internet of Things engineers and technicians, big data engineers and technicians, industrial robot system operators and operation and maintenance personnel, are emerging on the digital economy platform represented by Alibaba. McKinsey estimates that with rapid automation, 375 million people will need to change careers and learn new skills. In a relatively moderate automation scenario, about 75 million people would need to change careers, while almost all workers would need to adapt to increasingly powerful machines. These adaptations require higher levels of education, or more time spent on activities that require social and emotional skills, creativity, advanced cognitive abilities, and other skills that are relatively difficult to automate.

In the case of rapid automation adoption, China will face the largest employment shift in terms 6FC5347-0AF50-0BA0 of population – up to 100 million people, or 12 percent of the workforce in 2030. While this may seem like a large number, it is relatively small compared to the tens of millions of Chinese who have transitioned from agriculture over the past 25 years.

The wheel of history pulls history back five hundred years, man has invented all kinds of tools, and there are more and more people on the earth. In 2011, Gou Taiming publicly said that Foxconn would assemble 1 million robot arms in 2014 and complete the first automated factories in 5 to 10 years, which is the so-called “million robot plan.” However, Foxconn’s progress in advancing robots has not been as smooth as Gou had expected. Foxconn’s robots still have many problems to work out, with their instability and lack of accuracy, and many complex processes, such as polishing the metal casing of an iPhone, still requiring manual operations. But a growing number of young Chinese are reluctant to take on monotonous, low-paying assembly-line jobs, making it difficult for Foxconn to attract enough workers.

At the beginning of 2020, YouTube eliminated a large number of content manual review teams and replaced them all with AI content review, but in September, YouTube decided to temporarily halt this promotion and return the human moderators fired at the beginning of the year. One of the important reasons why AI audits are stopped is that the rules of AI audits will lead to a large number of accidental injuries compared to manual ones. During the National Day in October, the “New workers” series reports have attracted much attention, and Sany Heavy Industry has a variety of incentives to promote the transformation of traditional workers “old masters” to learn programming to achieve “machine replacement”. “After 70” Zhang Xingu, who has nearly 30 years of experience as a milling master, participated in the training class organized by the company and learned the basic knowledge of robot programming for two hours every night. Sany Group, the parent company of Sany Heavy Industry, has specifically introduced certification incentives for robot programming languages. Those who pass the certification will enjoy cash rewards, salary increases, and monthly allowances, with the total amount expected to reach tens of millions of yuan.