Thanks to leading digital technology, all
daily activities will gradually depend on automation powered by robots or
digital software. When we are freed from most of our present preoccupations, we
will be largely occupied with defining the tasks of these mechanisms, and
building and developing them.
First of all, we must refocus on the unique
aspects of our humanity. We will have the opportunity to invest our time in
building relationships with others, innovate, create, develop intuition and
outlooks, all activities that are not spontaneous, and the desired benefits or
lack thereof. While our activity centers on automation, our direct
responsibility is to prepare for the human activities of tomorrow…today!
When we were farmers, connected to the land, busy finding or
producing our own food, we provided our basic needs for ourselves (food,
housing, facing the elements, and wars). At the time, we also perished off this
earth before the age of forty, so we didn't even have to collect pensions.
Today, as we move away from the land and
become more and more urban, the basic needs that we are obliged to obtain
through others (our employer, clients, salaries, medical care, and taxes, the
lenders who fund our social and civil protection) have increased. Add to this a
doubled life expectancy where we need to live it for more money, donations, and
all the resources that secure a decent living. Therefore, we built our modern
society out of a great solidarity agreement: to leave the lands that give us
food, to work in the city, where jobs provide security and protection, food,
drink, and much more, and if something goes wrong, or when our community
services are finished, it will provide us with our special needs for the rest
of our lives.
Accordingly, our society has transformed
into a symbiotic society, based on a large number of mutual relations that
constitute its basic value, and support our common capabilities to ensure this
solidarity agreement. The accountant, for example, takes charge of the income
of the commercial establishment that needs an insurance broker. As the
accountant procures himself this job, it allows him to buy fruits and
vegetables in the neighborhood grocery, whose manager is responsible for the
supply and paying the producers, and he gives special offers to develop his
sales with the help of his lawyer wife, who goes to her doctor for medical
consultations…and the cycle goes on and on…
The challenge that faces us all is how to sustain this
agreement, over a relatively short time (10 to 15 years), in all the urban
centers of a planet of 8 billion people, among accountants, taxi drivers,
brokers, utility agents, product managers, lawyers, doctors…most of these
activities are becoming automated, because they are repeated and therefore
digitally reproducible.
The challenge will not be to replace human-based
activity with machines. We have been doing this for a while since we got used
to stability in our lives. The challenge is when it happens very quickly,
involving everyone at the same time, everywhere, and we are talking about a
population here that is larger than those who experienced previous developments
(finance, climate, and media). The challenge is also in the pace and size as
well as in the fact that we are more vigilant, shrewd, and informational,
especially in Western countries, where people are accustomed to an advanced way
of living... As for the poor, especially in most African countries, the Middle
East, and Asia, the concept of challenge differs from the feeling of another
challenge: maintaining the balance.
The problem is that, like other major collective
predictions, the challenge arises in front of a large number of individual
decisions that go along with it, because at some point, everyone seeks their
own interests, especially in the digital preparation stage. This is where
automation becomes necessary for everyone.
All life
activities, including technical feasibility, economic interests, and living
requirements, will gradually become automated. This is the inescapable truth. And all of us, as
individuals, will prefer self-driving cars over taxis for their ease of
handling. At the corporate level, automation will take place because it
provides a competitive advantage (no strikes and lower operating expenses), In
the case of associations and governments, automation will facilitate the
automatic implementation of the development of the services provided, and the
workmanship will increase among fewer, but more equipped employees.
And last but not least, the rationalization of
spending will improve. This will be a collective challenge because it relates
to all of us in our different fields, and perhaps at the same time, our different
activities. This challenge deals primarily with those in positions of
responsibility, those who decide whether or not to invest in automation, choose
the fields, the pace of investment and set priorities, appoint the accountant
or manager, lawyer or doctor, who will be the first to be freed from their
repetitive activities, which will be handled by advanced robotics.
There emerges
a renewed responsibility, namely, to propose, design, and build new activities
parallel to the quality of the new services, which will require new skills,
developed human professions, and other forms of communication and connections
that in turn create renewed economic and social values.
The essence of the forthcoming responsibility, to be
able to respond to this human challenge in the digital age, is to recognize and
seize the next opportunity to grow together collectively, as it lifts us,
brings us closer to each other, and accept and acknowledge that the past 100 years
have transformed people and move them from working on factory production chains
to emails.
We created
robots, and trained these machines to do what we do, so can we secure humanity for
humans? If this issue is resolved, the next digital age will be interesting,
productive, and stimulating for the sophisticated operators among us, and also
for the support and supervision workers and even for future farmers who will be
different from their ancient forefathers.