Australia’s role in the globalised technocratic 21st century economy

| August 26, 2015

More than half of the jobs students are currently studying for will be automated in 10 years. David Coleman says we need to give young people a chance to develop skills which are relevant to their future.

A new report by the Foundation for Young Australians has made some alarming observations about the focus of the present education system. According to their CEO, Jan Owen, 60 percent of students at university are studying for careers in jobs that will be automated in 10 years. For TAFE students it’s even worse, with 70 percent of their course careers to be automated in the near future.

If we are to give young people a chance to develop skills which are relevant to their future, there must be a major adjustment in the direction of education in Australia and indeed the perceptions engendered in our leadership of the economic future of the country.

Commentators consistently highlight two major areas that will need to be addressed. The first is that the automation of economic tasks that were previously performed by humans is, in practical terms, impossible to reverse and will only continue at an accelerating pace in the future. The efficiencies and cost benefits of further automation will be irresistible.

As I have written in the past, the development of artificial intelligence is now at a point where even traditionally irreplaceable jobs and professions such as administrators, analysts, lawyers, doctors, engineers and accountants will have the scope of their work greatly reduced or eliminated entirely due to the ability of artificially intelligent machines to perform complex tasks which were traditionally performed by human beings. However, automation is also a job source for people that have skills in designing, building, maintaining and operating the hardware and software that runs automated systems. The most likely outcome will be that jobs will evolve to become essentially a programming task where a professional programs an artificially intelligent machine to perform work which traditionally was done manually. These types of jobs are the ones that we need to prepare young people for.

The second major theme that arises consistently is the further development of the green economy.  Despite what our current leadership might say about coal, oil and fossil fuels and what they mean for Australia’s future, from a global perspective the writing is on the wall for these dinosaur industries.  Contemporary green technology like superfast charging batteries and super cost efficient solar panels are propelling green power technologies far beyond any efficiency level that we could hope for from fossil fuels, even disregarding the environmental impacts.

Furthermore, Australia is uniquely positioned to take advantage of developing eco-tech. The abundance of sunshine and ‘solar arable’ land in Australia is a massive opportunity which we should be taking advantage of. Communities in the Middle East are now being established around the solar powered desalination concept which creates a sustainable source of power and fresh water in places that would otherwise be a desert. Australia has the potential to be a global eco-power ‘powerhouse’ if you will forgive the pun.

If Australia could establish even a small solar industry of the type that is being established in Germany or the United States at the moment, it is possible that we could actually export electrical power to our Southeast Asian neighbours as well as meet our own domestic energy needs in a way that is sustainable for the global environment.

SHARE WITH: