In several recent articles, we’ve talked about the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and increased automation. One thing that I’ve heard repeatedly is how these and other technological advancements are taking away jobs from real people. But this perceived problem is nothing new. When we look back at history, we find numerous examples of technology “stealing” jobs from people, only to find that these changes led to the creation of more jobs, albeit of a different sort. What I want to remind people of is this; life is full of change, and while at times uncomfortable or undesired, humanity is very good at adapting to these changes. We can choose to live in fear and sorrow over what we may be losing, or we can view it as an opportunity for greater things.

According to a recent McKinsey report, by 2030 up to 800 million jobs worldwide could be lost to automation. In the US, the figure is likely to be 39 to 73 million jobs, or around one-third of the workforce. The report sees “a rich mosaic of potential shifts in occupations in the years ahead, with important implications for workforce skills and wages.” Importantly, “while there may be enough work to maintain full employment to 2030 under most scenarios, the transitions will be very challenging.”
With automation providing compelling benefits for users and businesses, a workplace transition is inevitable. But what tools will you require to successfully navigate this exciting future?

Stay Human
While many jobs will cease to exist, and all work will be completely redefined, one of the biggest advantages people seem to forget they have over a machine is their humanity. Simply put, there are skills that are beyond even the most advanced artificial intelligence – for example, emotional intelligence. According to the World Economic Forum, emotional intelligence is set to “become one of the top skills needed by all,” as it’s not something you can teach a robot. By comparison, the abilities to negotiate and be flexible are going to be far less important “as machines, using masses of data, begin to make our decisions for us.” It’s a case of identifying what skills you bring that no computer or algorithm can successfully recreate.

Cheaper Goods Create Employment
It may seem counter-intuitive that having machines create our goods could ultimately fuel further employment – after all, if a robot is doing a job, that necessitates a human not having one. However, as has been shown throughout history, improved automation leads to prices falling, which leads to greater spending, thus creating more demand and new jobs. Deloitte gives the example of grooming services: “In 1871, there was 1 hairdresser/barber for every 1,793 citizens in England and Wales; today there is one for every 287.” As life has grown more affordable, people have had enough disposable income to spend money on services that would have seemed frivolous if they were living in poverty. Greater automation will make life cheaper, increasing demand and thus creating jobs.
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The End of Mundane Tasks
Ultimately, the kind of tasks that are going to be performed by machines and AI are the ones that people would probably rather not be doing in the first place. Dr. Don Perugini, co-founder of AI company Presagen, explained in Revolver that his own staff were far more productive as a result of increased automation in the office: “An example is our former staff’s productivity was 70 percent. They were spending 30 percent on all these mundane administrative tasks that they just didn’t want to do, filling out timesheets and so forth. AI can easily take over those specific tasks for people, and we can become a lot more productive, and people may actually enjoy their jobs more.” At the end of the day, automation is dramatically changing employment, and change tends to be daunting. But if the outcome is cheaper goods, more jobs and more enjoyable work, perhaps this is a change we should embrace.

Bridging the digital divide between what Marc Prensky coined digital “native” students and digital “immigrant” teachers will mean a rethink in education as the pace of technological change picks up. Fundamental to this shift is the way teachers view technology as something new and innovative, while their students just regard it as a normal part of everyday life. It just is. Let that sink in.

Throw in a recent PwC study that showed teachers lack confidence when it comes to using technology in the classroom and it is the teachers who have been thrown a steep and uncomfortable learning curve. Two trends seem to emerge from this discomfort: either a passive use of technology for watching clips or reading websites, or denial by not using technology at all.

Overcoming Distractions
Many teachers feel they simply cannot compete in the attention economy against the power of the internet. After all, the web provides a slew of distractions: games, social media, YouTube. Add to that for every 30 students to keep an eye on, there are 30 screens to supervise. Students can easily hide their device as they aim for a new high score on Fortnite. Griffith University lecturer Jason M. Lodge warns the prevalence of technology can hinder rather than help. “The most scarce and precious resource that the internet is designed to capture is attention,” he says. “The very same resource that is required for students to learn effectively.” Then there’s Murphy’s law and technology. Frozen screens, uncharged devices, and a network outage can really disrupt the flow of a lesson. But the tide of technology is not going to reverse, so teachers do not want to be caught on the wrong side of history.

Overcoming Obstacles
Effective use of technology in the classroom means putting the pedagogy first. Throwing technology into schools is an expensive exercise if it does not serve a purpose. That is the argument of Michael Cowling from Central Queensland University, whose visit to the EduTech conference forced him to think hard about the role of technology in the classroom. “I’m not questioning the ability of teachers to develop good lessons; I’m questioning how they will be able to integrate technology into their class for maximum effect without a full understanding of the technology and what it is capable of,” he writes. Google can see the gap and is attempting to close it with professional learning.

Effective Professional Learning
Choosing the right type of professional learning to help close the technological gap is key. Making time to master a new piece of technology is important. But not as important as understanding how that technology can be harnessed to supercharge student learning gains. Teachers need to be shown the promise of technology so they can focus on its potential rather than its pitfalls. They can become part of a school-based professional learning community. A meeting once or twice a week with colleagues can provide an environment to discuss and solve technology-related issues in the classroom as well as allow peers to share knowledge. Building a technology-rich classroom has the potential to transform student learning and lead to greater engagement. Students are screaming out for challenge. We know this because they look for it in sports teams and online games. Becoming more confident users of technology in the classroom requires teachers to become the students for a while.

Two days after being shot, Bob Marley took to the stage to perform a free concert in aid of easing political tensions in his home country of Jamaica. The legendary musician’s logic was simple: “The people who are trying to make this world worse aren’t taking a day off. How can I?”
It’s a logic that the tireless researchers, doctors and scientists working in the field of medicine take to their work every day – disease doesn’t take a day off! As a result, brilliant discoveries and inventions are being brought to light all the time.

Where There’s Smoke There’s … Diagnosis
Part of the reason we use terms such as ‘remission’ rather than ‘cure’ is that cancer is such a difficult disease to pin down – surgery may have got all the cells, but there’s also a chance some were missed (chemotherapy is often used as a precaution for this very reason). However, the iKnife could help ensure all cancerous cells are removed in the first procedure. Like many modern surgical instruments, the iKnife uses heat, rather than a blade, to make its incisions. However, where smoke is generally seen as a superfluous side effect, the iKnife uses rapid evaporative ionization mass spectrometry (REIMS) technology to analyze the smoke.
“After the smoke has been aspirated, we then apply machine learning tools to the raw data to search for patterns of molecules against large databases of previously validated spectra,” Dr James Kinross, consultant colorectal surgeon and senior lecturer at Imperial College London, explained to SelectScience. The result is that the surgeon is told in real-time if the cells being removed are cancerous or not – vastly improving the odds that all cells that need to be removed are done so.

Wiping Out Malaria With Spit
The 2018 World Malaria Report found the disease is still killing 435,000 people per year, with the majority of those children aged under five. While there is new technology that can identify the disease before the patient begins to exhibit symptoms, vastly improving the chances of successful treatment, a blood test needs to be administered. And with the majority of fatalities occurring in children, it can seem an unnecessary cruelty to subject someone so young to the pain and trauma of a blood test for a disease they don’t apparently have. It’s also an expensive procedure, requiring highly trained professionals and extensive logistics – all to identify a disease found overwhelmingly in the world’s poorest nations. However, a team of researchers have discovered a workaround – saliva. Specifically, it was discovered that the parasite that causes the disease secretes a specific molecule that can be found in an infected patient’s saliva.
“The saliva test basically works like other blood-based malaria rapid diagnostic tests that have a test strip inside a plastic cassette, similar to a pregnancy test,” Rhoel David Ramos Dinglasan, of the CDC Southeastern Center of Excellence in Vector Borne Diseases, wrote for The Conversation. “It is important to note that the portable saliva test is almost as sensitive as a molecular diagnostic test, which are only available from a laboratory.” Dinglasan speculated these cheap testing kits could be rolled out within three years, which hopefully would help achieve the World Health Organization’s stated aim of malaria elimination.
 
How Packaging Could Slash Heart Disease
It’s far cheaper and less invasive to prevent disease than to cure it, which is why preventive medicine is becoming a major focus. And one of the best ways we can defeat a host of diseases in advance is to cut obesity levels. Obviously, this is a battle that needs to be fought on a number of fronts, but healthy diet is a huge factor – and recent studies have found that getting people to eat better may simply be a case of changing the packaging. Research published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine said the key to getting people to eat better is by emphasizing “taste and satisfaction rather than nutritional properties”. “By making the healthy choice and the delicious choice one and the same, taste-focused labelling represents a low-cost, scalable strategy that holds potential for increasing consumption of healthy foods,” the study concluded. It’s a small start, but if it helps to cut rates of heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure, the most important shift in medicine in the immediate future may actually be redesigning food packaging!