We wait too long in our community to have important conversations.
We can see the trail of problems in hindsight, be they housing and planning issues, transit deficiencies, chronic homelessness or identity politics that have distorted the jobs we attract and repel.
There is a very important conversation ahead that could define our quality of life, one that our city should lead as a commitment to those who work here in an effort to deal with the anxiety of automation.
The best estimates suggest that the next two decades will witness between 40% and 50% of our jobs automated. Mr. Robot is no longer fiction.
Urbanization calls for political foresight to benefit the economic well-being of citizens. Yet our city’s leadership is more smitten with the instant gratification of attracting technology-related jobs than understanding that technology must be wrestled with as an economic and social force once it is upon us. While it is fine to have green-city aspirations, we are doing nothing to have smart-city aspirations.
I returned in recent days to the federal Advisory Council on Economic Growth reports released a few weeks ago, and they are blunt in their concerns about the future. Our schools are not graduating students with the appropriate skills and behaviours, industry has reduced investment in learning and development and we are facing a barrage of technologies that will automate two-thirds of economic activity.
Rather than finger-point, civic leadership has to finger-invite, for the cities know the dynamics of their districts and would with an inclusive discussion identify the particular prescriptions that offer optimal outcomes. Again, though, we have the sound of crickets, mainly because it’s a daunting challenge and it’s not as politically sexy as fighting pipelines or suddenly claiming the space in combating opioid ravages.
I was privileged last week to take in a public talk and be present at a small dinner at the University of British Columbia (UBC) for Robert Reich, the former U.S. labour secretary under Bill Clinton and one of his country’s most distinguished political economists. He was here as part of a U.S. studies initiative by Rogers Communications executive Phil Lind, a UBC alumnus.
Reich talks meaningfully, bracingly and somewhat apprehensively about the many waves of automation that have and will hit many of our bread-and-butter jobs, particularly in manufacturing but also in the very technology sector that has bred it.
He sees the robotic writing on the wall, of the unmistakable impetus of artificial intelligence to further inequity, and says we will have no choice but to respond.
Some of his ideas, like a guaranteed annual income, seem like a moon shot at the moment in the American context, even in a Canadian one. Some, though, like an earned-income tax credit, are meaningful anti-poverty staples.
But the most compelling of his arguments involves the development of a re-employment strategy premised on mid-career re-skilling and bolstered by a culture of lifelong learning, and here is where I think there is an opportunity for the city and region – not to be lone wolves, but to identify the paths.
It is a conversation we need.
The “gig” economy is upon us, and if we are not seeing its full impact yet, it might be because it is more applicable at the moment to younger workers than in mid- and late life. Very soon, though, it is bound to cut across the demography and move more of the professional class into consultancies and projects and away from a nurturing corporate environment.
We are barely capable of dealing with the challenges millennials face in an uncertain workforce. Imagine what we will be confronting when adaptation and resilience are most everyone’s issues.
But imagine is what we must do. We have to see automation and transformation as civic issues, not simply global ones, and use the time ahead profitably to build a supportive community that encourages us to take our occupations to another level. Bring on the discussion.
Kirk LaPointe is Business in Vancouver’s vice-president of audience and business development.
