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CreativemachinesAn Ericsson Consumer operation could be easily standardized and taught Today: machines are flexible and can evolve; handling requires skill and knowledge that cannot be easily reproduced4. Creative work is no longer exempt All jobs where efficiency and productivity gains can be made will be impacted, including creative work5. The new tech elite Between 2012 and 2016, the gap in internet use between higher and lower socioeconomic classes has doubled The tech elite will improve their productivity drastically using automation and AI, creating downwards economic pressure on more traditional middle-class professions6. Lifelong learning needed on all levels Lifelong learning schemes need to be implemented in companies as well as schools Societies that foster continuous learning will be much better positioned to reap the considerable benefits of AI supportArtificial Intelligence (AI) is the field within computer science that seeks to explain and emulate, through mechanical or computational processes, some or all aspects of human intelligence. Typical areas of research in AI include natural language processing and synthesis, computer vision, problem solving, learning and advanced robotics.A move that changed everything3Ericsson | Creative machinesSince the industrial revolution, employees have worried that newtechnology could make their jobs obsolete. The introduction of newmachines in the early 19th century led to protests from the workforce. As early as 1811, skilled textile workers (known as Luddites) rioted against mechanization of stocking and spinning frames in England.1Naturally, they felt threatened and indeed many jobs were lost in the textile industry. The number of hand weavers decreased from 240,000 in 1830 to 43,000 in 1850 and there were only 10,000 by 1860.2However, we also have to take into consideration that handicraft workers during the industrial revolution were a considerably smaller group compared to the middle class in England today. Estimates show that there were approximately 330,000 handicraft workers in manufacturing (excluding laborers) in England and Wales in 1811. This accounted for only approximately 3 percent of the total population.3But even if the Luddites worries were founded, not all jobs were actually replaced by machines. Instead, the economy underwent continuous structural change and more technologically advanced machines improved the production process. While this did reduce the number of human jobs in certain industries, new labor-saving technologies also increased productivity and lowered prices which, in turn, led to an increased aggregate demand. As a result, jobs lost in some industries were often replaced by new job opportunities in others, driven by increased demand and new innovations. In 19th-century Wales and England, the share of total employment in the textile industry decreased from 10 percent of the workforce to 6 percent. But on the other hand, the corresponding share in mining increased from 2 percent to 9 percent, and employment in manufacturing of machines grew from 1 to 3 percent.4The middle class pays the priceStill, certain groups in society were particularly affected by the introduction of machines. Specifically, machines increased the productivity of lower-skilled workers more than that of handicraft workers belonging to guilds as handicraft workers were replaced by a combination of machines and low-skilled workers. Employees from lower socioeconomic groups actually benefited as they became machine operators and took over the jobs from the artisan class, and saw their salaries rise, too. Handicraft workers were between unskilled workers and the nobility on the socioeconomic scale. As the artisan class was virtually wiped out by the industrial revolution, it is fair to say that those in the socioeconomic middle (which we would call the middle class today) paid the price for the industrial revolution. At the same time, increased productivity among lower-skilled workers eventually resulted in more equal income distribution.51 Sale, K. (1995), Rebels Against the Future Lessons for the Computer Age, London: Quartet Books Limited,2 Clark, G. (2005), The British Industrial Revolution, 17601860, California: University of California Davis.3 Lindert, P. H. (1980), English Occupations, 16701811, Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, 40(4), pp. 685712.4 Shaw-Taylor, L. (2009), The Occupational Structure of England and Wales, c. 17501911, Paper prepared for the INCHOS workshop, Cambridge July 2931.5 Executive Office of the President (2016), Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and the Economy, Washington D.C.The industrial revolution the mechanical machine4Ericsson | Creative machinesToday, machines are increasingly able to take over cognitive work from humans which is freeing up human workers for other tasks. As the machines introduced in the industrial revolution were inflexible, the work required to operate them could be described and standardized in work process charts. The operators skill level was also easy to define and teach, making mass employment possible at this level. Workers with the skills to operate machines were also free to move between different types of machines and production lines. But now, machines are more flexible and evolve over time, from constantly pushed updates to self-learning technology. This makes the role of machine operator more difficult to standardize, as it demands much higher mental flexibility and intellectual skills, and human operators must constantly re-educate themselvesplementing or replacing?AI systems have already beenimplemented in several industries, fromfinancial services to cyber security.6In healthcare, it has the potential to support radiologists by scanning and identifying abnormalities in X-rays andmaking recommendations accordingly.This enables medical doctors to workmore efficiently, as completing more scans in less time frees up time for other tasks.7Medical doctors are highly skilled professionals and AI is currently only able to take on minor parts of their complex responsibilities. But when it comes to simpler tasks, AI systems can replace the human worker altogether. For example, the Swedish municipality of Trelleborg has assigned a robot for process automation and administrative tasks (such as handling applications for financial assistance and security alarms).8In this case, the robot is replacing semi-skilled work and the number of human workers needed has been reduced.6IBM, Stories about how Watson and AI are changing business, retrieved Online, June 01 2018, ibm/watson/ai-stories/index.html7IBM Watson Health (2016), Imagine your world with Watson, ibm/blogs/watson-health/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/WHI-Overview-Executive-Brief.pdf8Swedish Radio (2018), Fler bidragstagare fick jobb nr robot tog ver anskningar om std, January 8, available online: sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=83 given the direction and sectors AI is working on, there will be more new jobs that will open up. But that fear is driving people down, and we see two schools of thought one very supportive of AI and one very much against. There should not be two schools of thought. When a job is taken away by AI, a much more enhanced activity can be done by a human.”Radhika Jadcheria, Emerging Technologies Advisor “Everyone agrees that creativity is a skill that will be difficult to automate, although there are many examples of efforts to automate human-level creative tasks. Or at least to speed up human-level creativity, so that 1 human being plus 1 AI could do the work of 10 creatives.”James Hughes, Executive Director, Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET)Figure 1: Percentage who think AI help would be good in the following areasAnswer your email for youWrite your status updates on social networksDo simpler work tasks for youHelp you improve your intelligenceHelp you improve your work capacity0%30%20%10%40%50%60%Source: Ericsson ConsumerLab, 10 Hot Consumer Trends 2017, 2016Base: 7,138 advanced internet users aged 15-69 in Berlin, Chicago, Jakarta, Johannesburg, London, Mexico City, Moscow, New York, San Francisco, So Paulo, Shanghai, Sydney, Tokyo and TorontoWhite-collar workersBlue-collar workers6Ericsson | Creative machinesToday, machines can perform certain cognitive tasks, but will it only be administrative and tedious tasks that we would like machines to do? In the future, there is a strong possibility that jobs requiring higher skills and education will also become automated.9Even today, as well as substituting workers performing routine tasks, computer technology also complements their non-routine tasks.10In the AlphaGo example, the AI completed a move that no human player had previously seen. This went beyond supporting or replacing a repetitive human task to create something new, showing the potential of AI. As machines are increasingly flexible and evolve over time, the complexity of the assignments they can do also develops. AI therefore has the potential to move into (and increase productivity within) cognitively demanding jobs like creative work.In fact, AI is already used in creative work. For example Googles The NSynth Super11uses machine learning to help artists create new sounds and IBMs Chef Watson12supports chefs in coming up with new ideas. Chef Watson was trained to know about different cooking schools and food chemistry, which gave it the ability to make original and inventive combinations. In this instance, AI is a creative tool for chefs needing to please a demanding customer base who expect constant innovation.AI in fashionThe fashion industry is also facing an increasingly demanding customer base. New trends are constantly emerging, meaning fashion companies must work quickly to transform on-trend designs into manufactured garments. Indian fashion company Myntra (part of Flipcart) has worked with AI-driven fashion for a long time. Their AI system works as a fashion designer for two of their brands. It browses social media platforms (like Instagram and Pinterest) to identify trending visual attributes of clothes (such as colors, patterns, cuts and materials) and suggests fashion designs. These designs are then evaluated by another AI system, and the ones deemed likely to succeed are sent to production. For the AI-designed brands, the first human intervention doesnt happen until the manufacturing process. Today, Myntras AI fashion lines are very successful, and they have managed to shorten the turnaround dramatically.The AI inventorAnother field AI is beginning to conquer is invention and patent drafting, and it is likely that they will be able to complete the entire inventive and patenting process autonomously.13However, generating patents this way may prove challenging, as patents with no practical application could clog up the system despite the considerable application costs. Human AI operators will need to steer the AI system towards meaningful patents, and people with such skills would likely become attractive on the labor market.“I think it is fair to say that every company has to become an AI company, similar to the shift 1520 years ago when all companies had to become digital companies. AI will be the next phase.” Ananth Narayanan, CEO at Myntra9 Executive Office of the President (2016), Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and the Economy, Washington D.C. 10Autor, D. H., Levy, F. and Murnane, R. J. (2003), The Skill Content of Recent Technological Change: An Empirical Exploration, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118(4), pp. 12791333.11nsynthsuper.withgoogle/12Brandt, R. (2016), Chef Watson has arrived and is ready to help you cook, IBM Blog Post, January 1, available online: ibm/blogs/watson/2016/01/chef-watson-has-arrived-and-is-ready-to-help-you-cook/ 13 Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (2018), Artificial Intelligence Collides with Patent Law, page 6, World Economic Forum, available online: 3.weforum/docs/WEF_48540_WP_End_of_Innovation_Protecting_Patent_Law.pdf, page 6.Machine creativity7Ericsson | Creative machinesAs an individual becomes more skilled at operating an AI system, they will gain a competitive advantage. For instance, this would make a designer more efficient and productive and enable them to pick up trends more accurately. In the end, this designer could do the jobs previously conducted by a team of designers, so an organization would only need this designer rather than a team.Their increased productivity means it is likely that these individuals will be in high demand. Their salaries will increase accordingly and a new tech elite could emerge dividing the middle class into lousy and lovely jobs.14As an example, figure 2 shows socioeconomic class (ones economic and social position in relation to others, based on income, education and occupation) built on survey data from 25 countries gathered between 2000 and 2017, and analyzed by Ericsson Consumer University of Oxford.20Arntz, M., Gregory, T. and Zierahn, U. (2016), The Risk of Automation for Jobs in OECD Countries: A Comparative Analysis, OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Paper, no. 189, Paris: OECD Publishing.21Nedelkoska, L. and Quintini, G. (2018), Automation, skills use and training, Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs, Paris: OECD. Figure 3: Percentage who believe that their job will be replaced by a robot before they retire0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25%Blue-collar workersWhite-collar workersSource: Ericsson ConsumerLab, 10 Hot Consumer Trends 2018, 2017Base: 5,141 advanced internet users aged 15-69 in Johannesburg, London, Mexico City, Moscow, New York, San Francisco, So Paulo, Shanghai, Sydney and Tokyo9Ericsson | Creative machinesA major difference in comparison to the industrial revolution is the overall risk for societal disruption. When the artisan class employed in manufacturing was displaced, the overall impact was limited because it represented a relatively small group in society (3 percent in England in 1811). The artisans are not directly comparable to todays middle class, which is defined by income rather than profession but if it were to be impacted by a similar disruption, the effects would be greater, as the middle class is much larger. Todays middle class ranges from about 60 percent of the population in the USA to well over 80 percent in some European countries.22Until now, studies have indicated that technology has created more jobs than it has destroyed.23However, the important question is whether digitalization and AI-based automation will be able to continue that trend on a much broader scale when current jobs in the large middle classes are affected. Indications that stock market valuation a
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