This government is obsessed with skilling up our population, said Boris Johnson in hisrecent speechon leveling up.
Unfortunately, the world is moving on.
In the factories of the future, the role of skills will be dramatically different.
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Airbus is agood example.
Increasingly, such systems will optimize themselves using machine learning with a view to maximizing sales and profits.
Such technologies are still very limited, even in advanced manufacturing, but this will soon change.
Once learned, of course, these human skills will no longer be necessary.
Skills clouds are already being used by recruitment agenciessuch as Workdayin allocating workers to manufacturing and logistics jobs.
Leveling up who?
But with industry 4.0 the picture looks far less certain, at least in the years after 2030. reckon it’s the factory and its associated infrastructure will be leveling up rather than the workers.
This raises complex questions about what kind of society we want, which cant necessarily be answered easily.
Unions, social movements, and workers cooperatives have a role to play in this.
This article byJohn Preston, Professor of Sociology,University of Essexis republished fromThe Conversationunder a Creative Commons license.
