A media statement from Techsauce Global Summit, Bangkok, offered an estimate of job displacement following the growing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

A comment attributed to Raymond Yip, partner of Zeroth.AI said:

“AI is technology that helps you complete specific tasks. Machine learning is sometimes used anonymously. Although the ability to have machines with human-like cognition is a long time away, it’s estimated 800 million jobs globally will be automated by 2030.”

That represents more than 10% of the current global population, to put it in some context.

Assuming a loss of this magnitude, it suggests governments are going to face a tough challenge in dealing with the negative fallout of the fourth industrial revolution.

Mark Carney, governor, Bank of England, in September 2018 delivered a speech titled “The Future of Work,” which concisely explained why AI’s advances will trigger challenges.

He depicted the impact of technological changes on employment and wages as a sum of three effects: Destruction, Productivity and Creation.

Typically, the destruction of jobs precedes the benefits that accrue from higher productivity and creation of new jobs.

The preceding industrial revolutions displayed this pattern which makes one reasonably sure that the next decade will witness disruption in the labour market.

Carney warned that the greater scope of the fourth industrial revolution will mean that its scale will be larger.

The outcome could be that “jobs most at risk of automation are likely to lie across the entire spectrum of wages.”

This suggests that governments over the next decade will devote considerable resources to dealing with the social strife which disruptions usually catalyze.