Tech unemployment

Anew sword hanging over our heads

- AJIT BALAKRISHNAN

Technological unemployment occurs when developments in technology and working practices cause some employees to lose their jobs. The phrase and the event appear to have headline status nowadays.

Here is the Financial Times from London: “Tech companies axe jobs...”; and closer home, the Times of India: “IT (information technology) jobs slowdown: Sector sees 10 per cent dip...”. There are also the modern-day proofs to establish a topic’s popularity: Reddit has multiple discussions on the issue, and Wikipedia has an article devoted to it. This entry reviews the unemployment caused by technology through the ages and says that “a number of studies have predicted that automation will take a large proportion of jobs in the future”.

It is worth looking at the past to draw some insights about the complex future that we face. Between 1811 and 1817, a group of textile workers whose jobs were threatened by the automated looms of the first Industrial Revolution rallied around a Robin Hood-like figure, Ned Ludd, and attacked mills and machinery until the British government suppressed them. Economists saw in the Luddite movement an early example of a pattern: Large-scale automation entering the workplace and affecting wages and employment prospects. Is it possible that a similar Luddite movement may rise against the artificial intelligence (AI) technology revolution?