Nobel laureate economist Robert Shiller of Yale University said it is indeed a might task to teach his students “the art of living in the world” amid ever-increasing advances by computers in the as information technology age.
“The developing redefinition of higher education should provide benefits that will continue for decades into the future,”
he wrote in the New York Times.
“We will have to adapt as information technology advances. At the same time, we must continually re-evaluate what is inherently different between human and computer learning, and what is practical and useful to students for the long haul. And we will have to face the reality that the “art of living in the world” requires at least some elements of a business education,” he wrote.
“Most people complete the majority of their formal education by their early 20s and expect to draw on it for the better part of a century. But a computer can learn in seconds most of the factual information that people get in high school and college, and there will be a great many generations of new computers and robots, improving at an exponential rate, before one long human lifetime has passed,” he wrote.
“Two strains of thought seem to dominate the effort to deal with this problem. The first is that we teachers should define and provide to our students a certain kind of general, flexible, insight-bearing human learning that, we hope, cannot be replaced by computers. The second is that we need to make education more business-oriented, teaching about the real world and enabling a creative entrepreneurial process that, presumably, computers cannot duplicate. These two ideas are not necessarily in conflict,” he wrote.
“Perhaps we should prepare students for entrepreneurial opportunities suggested by our own disciplines. Even departments entirely divorced from business could do this by suggesting enterprises, nonprofits and activities in which students can later use their specialized knowledge,” he wrote.
“Many of these issues have arisen in my own academic life. My teaching has changed over the decades. I try to make it more useful in confronting issues of creativity and morality in the work world,” he wrote.
“The process of tweaking and improving the course to fit better in a digital framework has given me time to reflect about what I am doing for my students. I could just retire now and let them watch my lectures and use the rest of the digitized material. But I find myself thinking that I should be doing something more for them,” he wrote.
“So I continue to update the course, thinking about how I can integrate its lessons into an “art of living in the world.” I have tried to enhance my students’ sense that finance should be the art of financing important human activities, of getting people (and robots someday) working together to accomplish things that we really want done.”
Meanwhile, many American workers have seen their jobs eliminated by technology, and those still holding jobs apparently have reason to worry.
"The increasing use of technology to replace human capital is a trend that will not reverse anytime soon and will continue to proliferate in areas where unskilled, repetitive labor can be automated,"
Lance Roberts, chief portfolio strategist for STA Wealth Management, writes in a commentary.
"This is the risk that fast food workers take by lobbying for higher wages. An ordering kiosk can be quickly employed to take orders and deliver those to an automated production line." Or orders can simply be placed through a smartphone application.
So the outlook isn't pretty for employment and income, he cautions.
"The structure of the modern economy has permanently changed. Continued increases in technology will continue to suppress the need for labor, and the competition for available jobs will depress wages."
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