The Fourth Industrial Revolution....UBERK

Quite a Prophesy..But one discussed this week in the House of Lords

However it does make our prospects look bleak

Read : 

We are certainly in the beginning stages of the digital revolution, the fourth industrial revolution. I take the view that this industrial revolution, unlike the others, will destroy more jobs than it creates. This is unhistorical. As a Technology Minister in the Thatcher Government I made endless speeches saying, “Accept technology. It’s going to create more jobs than the Industrial Revolution, the car revolution and the computer revolution”. The digital revolution will not do that, because the agents of this revolution are much more widespread. They are artificial intelligence; big data; driverless cars, lorries and taxis; the internet of things; the growth of vast businesses in a matter of five or 10 years, such as Twitter, Facebook and Uber; virtual reality; cybersecurity; and hacking. These will all have huge effects on jobs.

I am not alone in thinking this. This is not an eccentric, lone view. The Davos meeting in January this year produced a devastating report, forecasting huge job losses right across the world in various countries, in two groups in particular: unskilled workers and middle management. For example, in America there are 3 million truck drivers and 8 million people in stopovers and sandwich bars. If the Mercedes lorries that are now being experimented with are driverless, most of those will go, so a lot of unskilled workers will go. Warehousing has already gone. The only time a human hand is likely to touch an Amazon order is when it knocks on your door and says it has a delivery for you. That will soon disappear because it is experimenting with drones for delivery in certain urban areas. A continuing massive amount of change is going on. There are also two reports from McKinsey that echo this. Only last week the Governor of the Bank of England, Mr Carney, expressed the views of his chief economist, Mr Haldane, who said that automation in Britain is likely to cost 15 million jobs.

Lord Baker of Dorking Conservative  4:35 pm, 13th December 2016

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