The way we communicate has already changed. Technological development has made it possible for humans to be permanently connected, at any time and from anywhere in the world. While Donald Trump was shaking hands with Kim Jon, in Latin America we were watching him instantly.
But the advance of technology has brought to the forefront the discussion on the robotization of work; that is, the replacement of human beings by machines that do the work for them. In Tokyo, for example, there are hotels where the receptionist is a robot, as pointed out in an interesting article in La Vanguardia. And who does this robot replace? A human being.
Robotization has a direct impact on the labor market, which is requiring more skilled labor. How is this challenge to raise labor productivity?
R. When we talk about robotization we are not talking about the big robot that we can see at Boston University, we are talking about an ATM, an online translator. When we talk about robots, we are talking about physical and digital machines. It should be clarified that robotization does not make occupations or jobs disappear, what it replaces are tasks that workers develop in occupations. Any worker develops in his job a set of tasks, which are diverse. Machines come to replace some of them. In this sense, the type of tasks that automation can replace or substitute are those that are characterized by being routine, which have a defined set of actions that are invariably repeated, and that makes them susceptible to automation. The risk faced by the labor market is a reduction in employment destined to the performance of this type of routine tasks. Especially manual tasks, although cognitive tasks, i.e. those that require knowledge, are not exempted either. In this case I give the example of translators. The occupation is that of translator, and one of the tasks he performs is to identify the sentence, its grammatical structure and translate it. This is a cognitive task, but it is routine. An online translator can perform that task. In fact, digital translators now do it much better than they did 10 years ago because they are learning patterns of behavior, which are incorporated by the users themselves. So, it is not only manual routine tasks that are at risk, but also cognitive ones.
In this regard, Ignacio Apella, a World Bank expert in Social Protection and one of the authors of the study "Technological Change and the Labor Market in Argentina and Uruguay: An Analysis from the Task Approach", has said that "robotization does not make occupations or jobs disappear, what it replaces are the tasks that workers perform in occupations".
But then he clarifies something that is key, and exemplifies it with digital translators, who have replaced human beings: "An online translator can perform that task. In fact, digital translators now do it much better than they did 10 years ago because they are learning patterns of behavior, which are incorporated by the users themselves. So it is not only the routine manual tasks that are at risk, but also the cognitive ones".
According to World Bank data cited by El País of Spain, "the proportion of jobs threatened by automation reaches 69% in India, 77% in China and no less than 85% in Ethiopia. Although Latin America is not mentioned, there is no denying that this wave is also impacting the region".
And they quote a crucial sentence: "Experts believe that access to quality education and skills development from an early age can counteract the effect of robots in the labor market.
We must beware of robotization because what robotization does is to displace labor and human talent, and what will that lead to in the end? Poverty, and poverty has an impact on consumption. For simple reasons of economic theory, a significant decrease in private consumption has an impact on the Gross Domestic Product, since demand is a component of it, and such indicator is considered one of the most suitable to measure economic growth, which, by the way, is not the same as economic development.
If there is unemployment: Who is going to consume? Who is going to support the State? The companies? It seems that everything points to the multiplication of poverty and inequality, threatening the stability of all countries.
That is why it is necessary to insist on humanism. Humanism is sensitivity, it is conscience, we must be aware that the human being comes first, life has no sense without the human being, the world has no sense without the human being, the market has no sense without the human being, politics has no sense without the human being, then humanism is nothing more than conscience, knowing that the human being needs to be fundamentally cared for.
Then, based on this, the roles must be played. We need an army of humanist businessmen, businessmen with conscience, and we know the shortages, we know the needs. The main need, in order to fight poverty and avoid robotization shock, is education.