The biggest threat to our jobs is technology

matt10001

I was reading an article yesterday and an economist says that half of british jobs will be automated in the next five years. There are already driveless cars, trains. There will be mass unemployment. Do the government care? Sorry if I posted this in the wrong sector

xapprenticex

Dont worry about it, remember we were supposed to have flying cars and be living in glass domes by year 2000.

daytona0

Pretty sure this was posted 5 years ago, and then 5 years before that and *possibly* 5 years before that too....

Prothet_of_Doom

Total Bull Crap.
What is true is that if GREAT Britain wants to be great, we need to be at the forefront of developing these new technologies, and therefore the government needed to invest in the STEM skills shortage some years ago, which will NOW result in a deficit of over 100,000 qualified engineers by 2020.

Alice_Walker

daytona0 wrote: »

Pretty sure this was posted 5 years ago, and then 5 years before that and *possibly* 5 years before that too....

I agree!

And if this mass automation is five years away, plenty of time to retrain in a non automated field.

Takeaway_Addict

matt10001 wrote: »

I was reading an article yesterday and an economist says that half of british jobs will be automated in the next five years. There are already driveless cars, trains. There will be mass unemployment. Do the government care? Sorry if I posted this in the wrong sector

Employers are wise to automate roles to keep costs as low as possible and has been put whilst some jobs become automated plenty more evolve.

bap98189

This simply isn't true. Yes jobs are being automated all the time, but new ones are also being created. Automation is cost driven, so the end result is cheaper widgets. But rather than spend the money they don't have to spend on widgets, people then spend it on goods or services that they couldn't previously afford. From digital marketing to pet psychiatrists, there are all sorts of jobs being created that simply didn't exist 10 years ago. Automation is nothing to fear - rather we as a country should develop the technology and then use it to trade with other countries to bring more wealth into this one, so people can spend it paying other people to do stuff.

motorguy

matt10001 wrote: »

I was reading an article yesterday and an economist says that half of british jobs will be automated in the next five years. There are already driveless cars, trains. There will be mass unemployment. Do the government care? Sorry if I posted this in the wrong sector

A load of balls.

TELLIT01

The same concerns were voiced by the Luddites in the early 1800's. The job market changes constantly and if, as a country, we don't stay at the forefront of change we will end up as our motor industry did in the 1970s.
Burying our heads in the sand will not stop progress, we just won't see it happening until it's too late - again.

Tiddlywinks

Computers are getting more advanced, will become self aware and build their own army to enslave humans and take over the world.

Particularly worrying if your name is Sarah Connor.


Seriously though, this issue has always been there with technical development - just read up on the 'industrial revolution' circa late 18th and early 19th century, we had the same fears back then.

agrinnall

matt10001 wrote: »

I was reading an article yesterday...

Hopefully somebody will soon invent a reading robot so that you don't have to worry about what people say (or you could just stop reading the Daily Mail).