Look ahead
Rethinking education for the age of automation Rohit Talwar and the team at foresight firm Fast Future look at some of the experiments needed now if society is to navigate the world of the future If we’re to thrive in an automated world we need to re-think our education. Jobs and the required skills will be different in the future – and that future is closer than we may think. With the growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI), automation and robotics, we need to acknowledge the shift to a graduate workforce; expand access to relevant education by opening up underused facilities and bringing business on board; abolish student debt and tuition fees; and pay (re)training and education salaries. We must ensure that advances in AI and automation are harnessed to unleash individual potential and enable a very human future. By waiting too long to address the issues and shift our approach to education, we could find that we are simply too far behind to ever catch up. Now is the time to consider the options and opportunities and ensure that we, our children, and our children’s children are all in a position to make the most of them. We’re in the middle of a crucial debate about the potential impact of AI and automation on specific tasks, roles, jobs, employment and incomes. It shows no signs of slowing, and we are being presented with a range of predictions, from the doom-laden spectre of mass unemployment to the exhilarating challenge of creating a wave of jobs, some of them entirely new. This debate is clearly of great significance to anyone involved in education, since it raises questions about the skills and knowledge our young people may need to navigate a very different future, questions of both a policy and a practical nature. At present the world is legitimately clueless about five key factors. 1. How far and how deep these new technologies will actually penetrate over the next five to twenty years. 2. The scale of opportunities that will be generated in the new sectors and businesses that might emerge. 3. How the nature of work, roles, jobs and workplaces may evolve over time. 4. How governments, businesses, educators and individuals might respond and the innovative solutions that may emerge. 5. What the net impact might be on employment and the economic prospects for today’s children and young people. We need to think the unthinkable. This means considering how to go about preparing the current workforce and the next generation for an uncertain future; creating new jobs and businesses; supporting the unemployed in a fair and dignified manner that positively assists their search for opportunities; and funding the transitions from this economy to future ones.
The key to all of this is education. It’s becoming abundantly clear that at the national, business and individual level, what will determine our ability to survive and thrive in a rapidly evolving landscape are our levels of education and big picture awareness. Our capacity to navigate a turbulent landscape will be driven by a number of factors: our understanding of how the world is changing; our digital literacy; our capacity to think, reason and solve problems; our ability to learn new skills and approaches quickly; and our mastery of life skills such as collaboration, scenario thinking, coping with uncertainty and handling complexity. We need to help our young people to develop these skills and prepare them to move from role to role in a world where job tenures are shortening and lifespans could continue to increase. They will also help a new generation to start their own businesses and take greater responsibility for their own livelihoods. This is something that could become an increasing priority as medium to large organisations reduce their workforces as a result of competitive pressures and automation. We can see an increasing pressure on small to medium enterprises to provide the bulk of employment across the economy, which will even affect future careers in large organisations. Here are some of the key policy experiments we are advocating. It is now common for business executives to attend immersive study tours to meet new ventures in emerging sectors, or to spend one or two weeks taking part in transformative courses at institutions like Singularity University. These are designed to accelerate ‘mindset change’ in organisations, by providing a crash course in the ideas shaping the future and the technologies that might deliver them. A similar, lower cost, society wide option would be to create a range of such programmes ranging in length from a weekend to a month. They would combine business visits, lectures and projects, and discussions with innovators, change agents and entrepreneurs. The programmes would be aimed at those in work, the unemployed, students, parents, teachers and those who realise their business has to change. The faculty could be drawn from business, academia and those in the local community who are retired or unemployed, but have a desire to serve and grow at the same time. Automation seems highly likely to reduce the number of lower and mid-level skilled jobs in the economy. We can see a scenario where, within five to ten years, 80% of the new jobs created will require graduate level education or equivalent. This means a cornerstone of any employment policy has to be to
Autumn 2018
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