A few generations ago there is a good chance that your family made their living working the land. Some life.
In 1900 around 30% of the working population did so, in 1950 20%, (SEE HERE) today it is less than 1% in the UK (SEE HERE).
Agricultural science and technology means that today we produce much more with much less. That is a good thing. Fewer farming employees has allowed more and more of us to do more and more productive things, those things have led to ever increasing wealth for us all.
Does anyone look back and think we’d be better off if those technological advances had not been made? If we were still working the land by hand?
Once upon a time we feared computers would take our jobs and make us all redundant. What happened instead is that we were all able to produce more. And more productivity lead to more wealth.
UK wealth has risen 20x since 1970, surely the vast majority thanks to technological advances, inflation over the same period is 13x – we are a good deal better off as a result.
Currently people fear automation and AI will make us all redundant. It is a reasonable fear but not supported by the last 200+ years of ever increasing efficiency and productivity led by technological advances. AI and automation are simply the next chapters in a very long story of human improvement.
They are tools and they will free more of us to do more, as tools before have done, and new tools will do in the future.
My belief is that they, and what’s to come, will mean more of us become engaged in the things that humans are naturally inclined to do (given the chance) – caring for our fellow humans and the environment and being creative.
AI and automation will mean that caring and creative roles become more and more valuable. This shift has already begun – look at the roles being filled today compared to just a couple of generations ago.
If things hadn’t changed we’d still be in the fields. And I assure you that, despite the trepidation more and more change brings, spending a day picking potatoes or hoeing a field by hand is no fun at all.
And I speak from personal experience which I welcome all technological changes and you should too.