A couple of weeks ago came the new book by Andrés Oppenheimer, Sálvese quien puede. The future of work in the era of automation, which poses the challenges that will be imposed in times of automation. The truth is that in this book Oppenheimer unlike what he did in others like Create or die, or the same Enough stories, does not raise many developments in terms of trends in automation for those of us in this world. We must recognize that in his previous books the Argentine raised thesis on innovation, technology and education that were quite revealing, opening a great discussion in our country on the role of technology, new startups, the education system, in short, books in its moment forced for those of us who are in the CTi areas, businessmen, politicians and educators.
However, his new book brings some novelties in his approaches and I must admit that it is pleasant to read and can be an interesting guide for those who seek to understand the impact of disruptive technologies on the current and future workforce. Through its pages it is evident how some of the new technology companies today only manage to hire around 10% of the total of people who at the time employed companies that were also in disruptive businesses. Such is the case of AT & T that managed to employ 758,000 people versus Google, which today employs 55,000. Another case is that of Bluckbuster, now defunct, which had more than 60,000 employees, versus the current giant, Netflix, which only has 3,500 people and is worldwide.
Robotics and automation arrived and are growing by leaps and bounds. Countries like Japan are subsidizing large companies with 50% of the value of the robots they acquire and small companies with 69% through a fund of more than US $ 1,000 million. To tell the truth, this type of government strategies will give them a huge competitive advantage, lower the cost of production dramatically, reduce errors and productivity will be of a very high level. In fact there is already talk of production plants where humans are scarce and do not exceed the figure of 10 versus 400 or 500 robots operating perfectly 7 days a week and 24 hours a day.
Oppenheimer also argues that robots are not only for the industry, likewise, colonize with services, in the case of call centers it is estimated that the percentage of humans will be less than 50%. In fact it is one of the most threatened sectors, but it will also happen with drivers, teachers and many other professions that will be automated in a high percentage such as the accounting, the surgeries of doctors, insurance agents, bank tellers, lawyers, investment advisers, receptionists, store clerks, cameramen, fast food chefs will not be the exception, as will reporters who will have robot helpers to pick up and write tedious and recurring news.
For this and many other reasons, it is necessary to quickly structure programs to support the productive sector in robotics and training in new labor trends, not for lack of vision and understanding of technological trends end up with a languid productive sector and agonizing.
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