By Michael Solomon, 10x Management Co-Founder
Technology is changing the world at an exponential rate, and Google just announced a campaign pledging $50 million to prepare us for the future of work. The $50 million initiative will help train job seekers in the United States and Europe adjust to the new jobs, industries and opportunities that are emerging as a result of automation and AI. This pledge, to me, is the beginning of a movement.
Earlier this week we saw the Indian government take a debatable measure to protect their citizens from job loss due to automation, and now Google is making a sizable investment to better understand the problem and work toward solutions. While many may comment that: A. Google is a big creator of this problem and; B. $50 million is not a huge number for Google, everyone needs to keep in mind that they are under no obligation to commit any funding to the pending labor crisis, and it is a potentially huge precedent-setting move. If every major corporation committed resources toward combating net job loss, it would advance us toward solutions much faster and hopefully inspire our governments to get involved in needed ways.
My hope is that Google will approach the coming labor problem in two phases. The short-term phase would be retraining workers to deal with inevitable job churn. The long-term phase would be planning for a future when humans will no longer have jobs due to being outperformed by automation and AI.
My other big hope is that a majority of companies quickly follow in Google’s footsteps, seeing that it actually is in their best interest to understand the coming labor changes and ensure that The Day After Labor – when humans no longer have jobs – is a good and peaceful one.
If you like this article, you might enjoy reading How Freelancers and Technology Are Changing the Way We Define Work