Pitch
Artificial Intelligence & automation may soon replace people in existing jobs
Description
Make life easier/more difficult for Singapore?
More difficult
Describe the change
Artificial Intelligence ("AI") & automation may soon replace people in existing jobs. As employers are urged to increase productivity with the aid of technology, the unintended consequence is that technology becomes so powerful they remove large numbers of people from their existing jobs.
Already, there are AI software which can do more than repetitive information-based tasks. A novel co-written by an AI software almost won a literary prize. A law student developed an AI software which churns out appeal letters for traffic offences.
How will this change impact Smart Nation Singapore in 2030?
Singaporeans who are unable to adapt to the new environment, who do not upgrade their skills to meet the demand for certain kinds of labour in time, will be obsolete and without jobs. There will be a glut of labour in jobs which are low-skilled and low-paying, resulting in an increase in the lower and low-middle income bracket of the population. This also means greater income inequality, which may further exacerbate social immobility in the long run. This would also mean greater stress on the social fabric of Singapore society.
The Government has introduced SkillsFuture as a means to help Singaporeans cope with this. The reality is that only a minority of citizens will take initiative to upgrade or learn new skills, and even so, only a small minority will be able to effectively upgrade and learn new skills such as to enable them to adapt to the new labour environment, which will itself be in constant flux. There's no guarantee there will be correspondence of skills demand and supply.
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