A robot took my job! How STEM education might prepare students for a rapidly changing world
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POINT AND COUNTERPOINT
A robot took my job! How STEM education might prepare students for a rapidly changing world Leanne Cameron 1 Published online: 18 September 2020 # Australian Curriculum Studies Association 2020
Keywords Robotics . Automation . STEM . Artificial Intelligence
Introduction
Automation in the workplace
While automation has been with us since the Industrial Revolution, recent developments in computing processing power, global connectivity, robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) have the potential to reshape our future labour markets. Analysis of the Australian job market found that 44% of current Australian jobs are at high risk of being affected by automation over the next 20 years (PWC, 2015). However, in the same way we can have full employment but no longer need chimney sweeps or town criers, some jobs as we currently know them, are highly likely to be displaced (WEF, 2018). Fortunately, history has demonstrated that new jobs will emerge. For example, 18% of the workforce today is employed in an occupation that essentially did not exist in 1980 (Lin, 2011). This presents a huge challenge for educators when preparing our students for their future. As the former US Secretary of Education, Richard Riley, famously said,
Automated production lines and robotic arms assembling cars are familiar images of automation and the use of robotics in manufacturing. However, a less visible but increasingly common form of automation is Artificial Intelligence (AI) - a relative newcomer to the automated workforce discussion. AI is currently having a huge impact on how we interact in our daily lives and due to its ubiquitous nature, it is important everyone understands what it is:
... none of the top ten jobs that will exist in [the future] exist today and that these jobs will employ technology that hasn’t yet been invented to solve problems we haven’t yet imagined (US Committee on Small Business, 2004, p. 184)
There has been discussion about ‘holding back the tide’ of automation to save current jobs and concern about losing careers, as we currently know them (Garcia & Janis, 2019; London, 2018; Thompson, 2017). Change is occurring at an exponentially increasing rate, not allowing workers to reskill. However, we must question how justified is the concern that robots might take our boring, dangerous and dirty jobs, leaving humans to do the interesting, safer, more challenging ones? Robots can successfully undertake the tasks that humans commonly do not enjoy doing (Yakowicz, 2016). Many activities that are routine, repetitive, structured and rules-based are likely to be automated over the coming years (Hajkowicz et al., 2016). Once established, automation is usually cheaper and more productive than employing people. Robots do not require sleep, breaks, get ill or take holidays nor, do they require employee benefit plans (Kucheriavy, 2018). Most
This paper considers the threat automation poses to the future workplace and then explores how the knowledge, skills and capabilities developed in the Science, Tec
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