Abstract
The diffusion of digital technologies, computers, robots and now the outbreak of artificial intelligence and internet of things is causing major changes in the demand for labour. Many jobs are rapidly disappearing because the corresponding tasks are automated and this substitution concerns not only low-skill manual and routine jobs, but more and more also cognitive medium- and even high-skill jobs. In this article, I briefly discuss two alternative views. One view claims that we are in a transition phase, but, alike the previous industrial revolutions, in the long run the balance between lost and created jobs will be positive both in numbers and, especially, in quality. The other view claims instead that the economic characteristics of the technologies of the current industrial revolution are profoundly different from the previous ones and that their impact on employment and social equality is likely to be negative on the whole.
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Notes
The fourth industrial revolution is based upon robotics, artificial intelligence, big data, internet of things, biotech, nanotech (Schwab 2016). Some authors consider it as a development of the third industrial revolution (based on computers and internet) rather than a new one. Regardless how we label it, it is a wave of technological change which is just beginning, and we can hardly imagine the precise directions it will take.
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This paper draws on an article published by the same author in Italian (Marengo 2018).
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Marengo, L. Is this time different? A note on automation and labour in the fourth industrial revolution. J. Ind. Bus. Econ. 46, 323–331 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40812-019-00123-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40812-019-00123-z