The economic management team of President Bola Tinubu that wants to create jobs for unemployed youths pounding the streets of Nigeria’s urban centres, must know that jobs that were easily available to those above age 50 almost no longer exist.
Online Meta AI and Google searches have almost displaced hardcopy dictionaries and reference books, as robotics, or programmable machines, are taking over some jobs earlier performed by human beings. Of the top 10 Standard and Poor’s companies in 1990, only IBM was a digital company, the others were brick-and-mortar companies.
By the end of September 2024, only one brick-and-mortar company, Tesla, that is even considered to be a digital company is in the top 10. The other nine are digital companies, Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Broadcom.
While Gilbert Houngbo, Director General of International Labour Organisation, observes that “Artificial Intelligence has the potential to transform the world of work,” he warns that “it is crucial to protect workers from the negative impacts of the digital revolution.”
Apart from causing job losses, the disruptive technology has turned many boom towns that prospered with the old technology into burst towns. Titusville, Pennsylvania, where the petroleum industry started, is no more.
Rich textile manufacturing hubs, like Bradford, England, have now become poor and desolate, with unemployed kids, who lack appropriate skills to function in the new technological milieu, have become drug addicts and criminals.
After the industrial Revolution yielded to the information age, that is even now in its fourth stage of evolution, specialist professionals, who worked as standalones for most of the 20th century, cannot fit into the work model of the new economy.
The new economy’s ICT-enabled business model accelerated globalization and business networking, and shifted work experience from brawn to knowledge. It emphasizes the service industry over the manufacturing, and drives work among organisations and individuals through digital connectivity.
Corporate meetings, enabled by satellite technology, hold virtually by Zoom or WhatsApp calls that link attendees in far-flung places like the Artic and the Antarctic, Sahara Desert and the Swiss Alps, the moon and the earth, and between Eskimos and the Masai.
Nationalists, including former American President Donald Trump, with his fetish of shutting America’s borders against immigrants, and Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally of France, must acknowledge the futility in preventing globalisatiion. The world is “flat!”
Key experiences that the new economy promises are E-Commerce; the presence of digital media with a convergence of telecommunications, computer and broadcasting technologies, biotechnology, financial technology―or fintech, big data, and renewable energy.
There is a reason why former American President Barak Obama averred that there is more resources between your ears than the soil full of mineral and agricultural resources. If you can work with the new technology, the higher your income will likely be.
Some fundamental changes enabled by the digital technology are, increased productivity, improved efficiency, new jobs, ability of workers to work from home and emphasis on knowledge-based companies.
The new technology however, caused greater income inequality, massive job displacement, foundational structural changes in the workplace, greater cybersecurity risks, data privacy concerns and obvious environmental changes.
It collapsed the specialization model of the Industrial Revolution workplace that Adam Smith recommended for faster and higher productivity, and replaced it with the multitasking generalist workman who merge many schedules into one omnibus task.
In the past, a television reporter must cover an out-of-studio event with a crew of cameramen, lights men, and a driver to drive an Outside-Broadcasting-Van (or OB-VAN). That’s at least four individuals on one story.
Not so these days, Only one reporter can cover the event, with his android telephone. He takes the footage, edits it for sound and picture quality, writes the story and reads it with the teleprompter app on his phone.
He sends the story online. And those in the studio can run it immediately without anyone guessing that only one “generalist” did the reporting. One individual can actually do the job of eight individuals with a do-hickey gadget.
In fact, those who know it insist that the engineering and computing capability within an android telephone is far beyond that of Apollo 11, the first space ship that landed astronaut Neil Armstrong and his colleagues on the moon in 1969.
The Internet of Things is essentially a network of devices embedded with sensors that have the ability to monitor the environment, communicate with each other and take the actions that human being could have taken.
Some experts say the ability of the IoT, to “see” anywhere, may soon make the security guards that watch over your homes unnecessary, just as driverless cars will soon make it unnecessary to hire those chauffeurs who eavesdrop on your private conversations.
American intelligence agencies used the satellite technology to ferret out terrorist Osama bin Laden, hiding in highbrow Abbottabad, Pakistan, through an innocuous phone call in the boondocks, before getting US Navy SEALS on Operation Neptune Spear to eliminate him.
In the early 1980s, America’s security agencies were able to sight and bomb the private home of Libyan strongman, Col. Muammar Ghaddafi, and killed his adopted infant daughter. No one in this ‘flat” world has a place to hide.
Worse still, is the “monster” called Artificial Intelligence that can perform a lot of the routine capabilities and tasks that the human being can perform. The repetitive job of the accountant and the diagnostic techniques of a medical doctor can be easily performed by AI devices.
But then, AI falls flat on its face in the aspects of emotional intelligence, creative thinking, adapting to new circumstances and complex decision-making—unless the human being intervenes. AI will not sense that an invalid needs to be hugged, nor would it think out of the box.
It can only function according to the way it is programmed. American standup comedian, Chris Duffy, recently told a Ted Talk audience, how he claimed to be CEO of Linkedin to Linkedin, on Linkedin, and Linkedin congratulated him, and informed his contacts on the same platform.
Another revolution that can upstage disruptions in the workplace is blockchain cryptocurrency that substitutes virtual money for physical currency and coins. When fully operational, not only will employment in the old-fashioned printing and minting works be phased out, those who cannot use the technology won’t be able to access to their own money. They would virtually be poor, even if they were billionaires.
To access money in what is called “wallets” may require, and pay, techies who have the requisite expertise. How about that, for the end of your privacy and your arrival at the totalitarian state of the Big Brother of George Orwell’s 1984? The One World Order is nigh.
Anyway, digital technology has redefined the work experience, and today’s professionals work more with their heads than their hands, use more gadgets as work enablers and perform even more tasks than an army of analogue workers.
Nigerians must begin to find a space in all this. Luddites won’t have a chance to halt the March of Times. Bosun Tijani, Minster of Communication, Innovation and Digital Economy recently disclosed that Nigeria’s 3MTT, or 3 Million Tech Talents, is the world’s largest tech training programme in the world.
So, embrace the multitasking generalists as the nemesis of specialists, with a requiem to division of labour!
