I love the title of this post. It came from my friends at Reimagining The Future. What do we do when automation has finally eliminated the need for humans to do mundane mind-boring tasks? That’s what this post is all about.
There will come a time in the not-too-distant future when all the mind-numbing jobs will be turned over to automation. What will happen to the people who currently have low-skilled jobs? That will likely be the question of the third decade of this new century.
As pointed out in the source article (click the graphic above to go there) the next twenty years will bring more change than the previous three hundred. I’m sure that thought strikes life-threatening fear in some of us. I am not one of those and I suspect that many of you who are reading these words either. We look forward to the point where humanity can finally get to our ultimate job.
As the source mentions, science fiction is becoming science fact and the end of routine work is on the horizon. This will all be brought about by the coming future leaps in battery technology, computing power, and artificial intelligence. There is simply no future where humans will be able to remotely compete with automation.
So, what will happen to those unprepared for the coming times?
One thing that is not automatable is handling complex challenges requiring judgment and unforeseen circumstances. Computers only know one thing and that is what we taught them. Yes, they will be able to bring up millions of similar situations to try to determine a path to a solution, but it will most often take a human to factor in those things that are not easily programmed. Things like empathy, intuition, and new discovery will become our jobs. We will continue to solve those things and turn the more mundane details over to automation. Whatever is easy for a computer is usually hard for humans and vise a versa.
What we need to make this transition happen is for the government to start to plan for the education and training we will need to successfully accomplish this paradigm shift.
That needs to happen soon or it just might be too late. Unfortunately, given the total disarray of our governmental processes and the fact that our educational system is in the hands of thousands of local often uninformed deciders something needs to radically change to make the government accountable for this part of the equation.
Looking forward to a possible scenario, it will likely mean that humans will only have to work three to four hours a day while robotics and computer associates do their jobs 24/7. Human work will not be the same as purpose but only a means to accomplish that real purpose. Maybe our purpose is lifelong learning and reinvention?
I could go on and on but I think you get the idea.
Our purpose is not our jobs.
We need to get over that idea…
If you want to see more I would encourage you to spend six minutes viewing the YouTube video by clicking on the graphic at the top of this post. Yes, it is scary in some ways but very encouraging in others.
Feb 17, 2025 PostScript:
I wrote the above post almost five years ago, and yes, boring jobs are disappearing across the landscape now, and it has many in a panic mode. That is evident from the recent presidential election. We appear to have turned our country over to a person who has ZERO empathy for this dilemma.
I believe the loss of mundane mind-boring jobs is at most secondary to the other highlighted problem shown above. We are simply not prepared for how to educate and train for this paradigm shift. Given the fact that the entire educational system in the U.S. is in the hands of local community people who have no idea what to do. We are no further along than we were five years ago!
But, I am an optimist, so I can see a time after the current president has virtually torn down the government infrastructure. The next president can build it back up leaving behind all the glut and inefficiency that is infused in the current bureaucracy.
It is only then that the solution to this problem will be even visible, let alone accomplished.
I have a lot more to say about all this, but I will leave that for several future posts.
RJ's Corner - Having My Say 