The following is part of an article in today' s Sunday Times
The average are done for. You don't need to be.
Toby Harnden
Do you want your child to have a job in 2033. If so, according to a book
that is gripping policy makers in Washington, they had better start
deferring to computers. Society i about to be divided into Big Earners and
Big Losers and those who rage against the machine are destined for the
scrap heap.
Tyler Cowen, an economics profesor at George Mason University in Virginia,
delivers the bad news cheerfully. Inequality is on the rise, he argues,
and the middle class will soon be seen as a quaint feature of a bygone era.
Over the next two deccades, he predicts, society will become a
"hyper-meritocracy" in which 15% will be richly rewarded for thir adeptness
in harnessing technology and the remaining 85% will be consigned to a
fragile existence in which wages freeze or fall and few get a second chance
at success.
His book, Average is Over, concludes that we are about to enter "the age of
genius machines, and it will be the people who work with them that will
rise". For the rest, life will be decidedly tough and although the
fracturing of society is "not inevitable in a metaphysical sense", he told
the Sunday Times, he had little optimism that governments would do the
things necessary to make the situation better.
An engaging and eclectic thinker, Cowen, 51, was chess champion of New
Jersey at 15, has written a guide to ethnic dining and is a prolific
blogger. The Los Angeles Times has described him as a [polymath].
Last year he was invited to Downing Street to deliver a seminar on
industrial policy and warned against Britain embracing the politics of envy.
Cowen emphasises the important of humility in accepting that computers
usually know best and has reflected this in his own life. He met his wife
10 year ago via Match.com, a medium that forced them "out of our usual
intuitions and to our mutual benefit". He is enthused by the advances in
chess brought about by computers and accepts that he might not have
succeeded as a young player using software "because I'm not sure how humble
I was back then."
The key, he says, is to realise that, as in "freestyle chess", in which
players can consult competer programs, "the human and the computer together
are strpnger than just the computer and certainly gronger than just the
human".
Being the best at chess -- or anything in life -- is no longer good
enough. "The humans who are best at freestyle chess are not the
grandmasters but people who are smart and know something about chess but
also know whento defer to the computer and when your isdom actually
counts for something." Computer algorithms, he argues, are becoming better
at knowing what we want than we do -- and successful people will just go
along with this. Reading Amazon or Yelp revview leads to better choices --
as does walking away from a business deal because a software pro9gram tells
you it's too risky, even if your gut is telling you to hang in there.
The downside is that employers will also usee computers with "oppressive
precision" to measuere output, weed out slackers and spot those who have
not always been steady and conscientious. Making a fresh start will become
next to impossible.
How do we nhelp ourchildren in this brave, somewhat scary new world -- to
be part of the 15% Cowen says that the future is too unpredictable to
produce lists of jobs to gravitate towards or to avoid. But he does advise
avoiding excessive specialisation: ""Do what you enjoy, learn general
skills and learn how to retrain yourself." _______________________________________________
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