"The robot phenomenon is not just an American thing. It will be world wide. Hiding you head in the sand will not work well. Ignoring it, like Tim Walz is doing, only offers disservice to the kids he is supposed to be serving."
When I was back at the University (almost too many years ago to count), I remember taking a class on minimizers and maximizers. It was one of those "duh!" theories, but interesting to listen to anyhow. Of course the maximizer was more likely to go on to become a Captain of Industry. Bold, hard charging, alpha type personality - leave no stone un-turned. The minimizer on the other hand, was just get by. Do the absolute least amount of work to get a barely adequate job completed. Some of us in the classroom flinched when we went over that definition!
Today, minimizers, either by choice or life circumstances, are going to be challenged should they be doing menial work which is repetitive. Challenged by whom? Immigrants, either legal or illegal? Nope - robots. And not just a few robots, legions of them.
In 2016 a study came out done by McKinsey and Company addressing this subject. How different job categories would be affected by automation. The bottom line is in fifty years, probably most jobs with probably have some aspect of AI and/or robotics involved. But between now and 2025, if you are hanging your future working in the fast food business, agriculture, manufacturing, warehousing, mining or retail, get ready for a jolt. You have better than a 50-50 shot of being replaced by a robot.
I know some are now saying, "Okay Bird - you have addressed this before. So what?" Here is the "so what?" Education. There is not one beating heart in the press corps who is challenging our new "education" Governor on his education plan. All he wants is more money to train our youngins for yesterday's skills. To end up with a BS (not Bachelor of Science) degree, with no job, and tens of thousands of dollars in debt. Our young folks need to be trained for jobs which do not even exist as yet. In other words, we need to train our children to be nimble. To be out of the box thinkers. To be critical thinkers. And to be maximizers.
We do have a small segment of the school age children who are being taught that way right now. Home schooled kids. Some charter schools. Some private schools. Montessori Schools. Guess who is not? Government schools. Many government schools, especially in the inner city, are no more than failure factories. They can't even get some kids up to being minimalists.
The robot phenomenon is not just an American thing. It will be world wide. Hiding you head in the sand will not work well. Ignoring it, like Tim Walz is doing, only offers disservice to the kids he is supposed to be serving.
One final thing. The other day while at Sam's Club, they had just finished upgrading their checkout lanes. Now 80% of the lanes are self checkout. The ones which are still staffed by people, were very empty. This is just one small sign of things to come. Change is in the air. Time to embrace it.
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