Source: MaxPixels, Public Domain

Computer: 24/7/365

People: 8/5/210 . . . assuming they don’t take other days, e.g., up to 12 weeks a year using the Family and Medical Leave Act, they don't come in high or hung over, and that they beat the statistic that the average full-time worker actually works only two hours and 53 minutes a day.

Computer: One-time hardware/software cost.

People: Weekly paychecks ad infinitum. Raises expected.

Computer: Accurate.

People: Less so.

Computer: Knowledgeable, maybe even self-teaching.

People: Variable.

Computer: Never complains, never files workers compensation, sexual harassment, , or wrongful termination lawsuits.

People: Variable.

Computer: Ever improving, cost dropping.

People: Variable, cost increasing, including government-mandated benefits.

So it’s little surprise that consensus is that over the coming decades, a large percentage of jobs will be lost to automation. In a recent post, I offered a possible scenario of what the average person’s life will be like in 2040, an era of diminished employment opportunities. Today, I project what working in a corporation or large nonprofit might look like.

Disintermediation. That’s the technical term for the number of mid-level employees. The term may be technical but the effect on average workers is far from a technicality. At the top of the heap, there will be a small number of highly skilled and well-paid techies, plus executives who will select hardware and software and review anomalous or objected-to lower-level decisions, which will be made mainly by artificial- -driven computers.

For example, today in most large organizations, human beings decide what to purchase (supply chain managers) how to price items (marketing and accounting staff) and how to respond to customer service complaints at low cost. Ever more of those decisions will be made by , possessing a wealth of knowledge impossible for any one person to have and automatically making ever better decisions because each decision that yields less cost-benefit will cause the algorithm to change. Some low-level tasks will be computer-assisted. For example, janitors will use a much improved robotic vacuum cleaner, but their boss may be a computer.

The incredible shrinking headquarters. The cost of office real estate, the ever more painful commutes, and improved videoconferencing thanks to holography, will cause headquarters to shrink, with most workers working at home. Business trips too will be greatly cut thanks to said super-videoconferencing.

Pricing. Because automation and other factors will continue to hollow out the middle-class, most organizations will produce products and services that can be sold cheaply, a price that even people living on a part-time, low-pay job perhaps plus a universal basic income can afford.

A much smaller percentage of companies will develop products for the aforementioned highly paid tech stars and executives. But many of those people will come to realize that the benefits of a 4,000-square-foot-house, vacation condo they rarely visit, and the breakdown-prone, service-hogging BMW or Mercedes aren’t worth it, and indeed often only add to stress. Those people will likely pay for stress reducers — for example, hiring more personal assistants or buying an immersion room in which they can experience the world in IMAX, passively, or, if they have energy left after their long day, as a protagonist in an adventure in the jungle, climbing Mount Everest, diving in the Great Barrier Reef, or soaring to galaxies beyond.

Hiring will be heavily automated. The invalid resume, interview, and references, which also are subject to accusations of racism, sexism, and ageism, will largely be replaced by online simulations of the job’s common difficult tasks. To avoid a shill taking the test, each keystroke would be fingerprint-sensitive, and iris recognition software would verify that it's the applicant who's looking at the screen.

Compensation reviews. Similarly, these would be automated, based on the employee’s performance on validated metrics. As with other AI-based decisions, an employee unhappy with the computer's decision could appeal to a live person.

The takeaway

Some prognosticators assert that new technology always creates more jobs than it kills. Alas, this time, it may be different. Agriculture and manufacturing are ever more automated, and ever-smarter self-teaching artificial-intelligence-driven computers are threatening even jobs that require subjective judgment. And in our information age, most products sold will be in bits and bytes, and unlimited copies of software are reproducible with the push of a button, no employees needed.

Employers recognize the trade-off between automation’s efficiency and the resultant decline in employment that reduces the public’s ability to buy products or services. But few individual companies can afford to forgo automation in the hopes of long-term societal benefit. That's true if only because, long before that accrues, the company will have been put out of business by more-efficient companies, that, thanks to automation, produce better products at lower cost. Thus, the company that resists automation in an attempt to save some jobs might well end up costing 100 percent of its employees their jobs.

The answer may lie in what is proposed in my recent post on the life of an average person in 2040. In essence, it posits that we need a society based not on but on creative outlet, relationships, and hobbies. That way, a person may need only a modest part-time job, perhaps plus a universal basic income, to live a satisfying life.

I read this aloud on YouTube.