In a recently published, roughly 75-page report, British non-profit organization The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts (RSA) outlined several scenarios for how the UK labor market will be impacted by frontier technologies such as automation, AI, AVs and more.
The analysis titled “The Four Futures of Work” was conducted in collaboration with design and consulting firm Arup and was spearheaded by the RSA’s “Future Work Centre”, which focuses on the impact of new technologies on work and is backed by law firm Taylor Wessing, the Friends Provident Foundation, Google’s philanthropic arm Google.org and others.
The report is less of a traditional research paper and more of a qualitative, theoretical and abstract exploration of how the world might look depending on how certain technological and sociological variables (immigration, political will, etc.) develop. The authors don’t try to estimate growth paths for new technologies nor do they try to reach a definitive conclusion on what the future of work will look like. The work instead looks to lay out multiple possible outcomes in order to help citizens prepare for transformations in labor and to derive policy recommendations to mitigate externalities in each scenario.
As opposed to traditional quantitative data-based methodologies, research was conducted using “morphological scenario analysis.” The authors’ worked with technologists, industry executives and academic researchers to identify the technological and non-technological uncertainties that will have a critical impact on the future of work, before projecting three (minimal impact, moderate impact, and severe impact) possible scenarios of how each will look by the year 2035. With input from the report’s collaborators, the researchers then chose the four most compelling and sensical scenarios for how the future of work look.
The value of the report depends entirely on how readers intend to use it. If one hopes to gauge market sizes or inform forecasts or is looking for scientific, quantitative research with data — they should not read this. The report is more useful as a way to understand the different ways new technologies may evolve through thought-provoking, fun-yet-probabilistic, and poetic narratives of hypothetical future economic structures and how they might function.
Rather than summarize the four detailed scenarios in the report and all the conclusions discussed, which can be found in the executive summary or full report, here are a few takeaways and the most interesting highlights in our view:
The underwhelming:
- Regardless of the use case, the paper is lengthier than it needs to be, with the first 30-40 pages repetitively walking through methodology or providing wordy background context on the divergent viewpoints that exist for every technology and social variable that went into the study.
- As someone who likes to operate in data, I found the report to be a bit ambiguous, vague and overly speculative — more similar to futurist fiction rooted in realism. By trying to illustrate how the entire labor market and economy might function, rather than focusing on specific variables, the scenarios are all over the place and seem to make drastic assumptions about somewhat subjective topics.
- For example, in one scenario the report postulates that resentment from economic stagnancy will cause some people to “… plough their energy into creating alternative economic institutions, from platform cooperatives to consumer owned banks to community-owned energy companies. More people leave the big cities in search of a different lifestyle, one more rooted in self-sufficiency and shaped by an awareness of our environmental limits. Some view this as a journey they have been forced to take against their will. Others, however, view the economic downturn as the push they needed to break free from jobs they rarely enjoyed…”
- The scenarios are weakened further given that the projections are not backed by quantitative, observable data points. Even the time horizon for the analysis seemed to be chosen arbitrarily: “We chose 2035 as our horizon as it felt suitably far away that the exercise would stretch people’s imaginations, but not so distant that it would be impossible to speculate on what might happen.” The narratives are detailed and colorful but that is what they are – just narratives.
The interesting:
- The report provides a compelling discussion about global game theory when discussing the choices governments face when it comes to technologies like automation, such as whether to institute limits, regulations, or otherwise. The actions taken by other governments are an often-overlooked consideration when discussing how policymakers should handle impacts from frontier technologies. The report discusses one country offering a friendlier growth environment for new technologies innately makes regulation a more daunting decision for others, as it can drastically impact the ability for their industries to compete. The report goes into more depth discussing how different approaches can create significantly more competitive wages, labor cost and industrial capabilities that ultimately can create more economic damage than stability.
- Similarly, the discussions around the impact of non-technological variables on the future of work seemed relatively differentiated and valuable. For example, the authors detail how developments in migration can impact the supply of labor, demand of labor, macroeconomic strength, and public opinion, all of which play critical roles into how governments and populations will perceive transformative technologies.
- Arguably more helpful than the examination of uncertainties regarding the future of work were the trends the report labeled as critical certainties and the economic characteristics that were consistent across all the scenarios. Interestingly, the report deemed the rebalancing of global economic powers as a certainty, with every scenario painting China as the dominant superpower alongside the US. Furthermore, every three out of the four scenarios projected high rates of inequality and included policy recommendations for the creation of some form of social welfare. The certainties also seemed more helpful since their roles in the future economy were not based on subjective projections made by the authors.
- A consistent factor that stood out across the scenarios was regulation and the role of public perception plays in the development of frontier technologies and rules surrounding them. The dynamic was particularly compelling given recent research that showed European citizens are overwhelmingly in favor of multiple forms of tech regulation – which may suggest a tougher regulatory environment in Europe is all but inevitable.
- The most insightful part of the study in our view was the accompanying survey the authors commissioned, asking UK Members of Parliament (MPs) about their perceptions on the future of work, how prepared they felt for its impacts, and how they should deal with related emerging technologies. The polling was conducted by data research firm YouGov and surveyed 100 MPs, including 41 Conservative and 50 Labour party MPs.
- A significant portion of MPs was fearful of the impacts new technologies will have on British labor, felt workers were unprepared for upcoming transformations and felt they didn’t personally have the expertise to make sound related policy decisions. The majority of MPs also supported creating personal educational programs for workers and stricter antitrust policies, while close to half of respondents supported enforced worker board representation, the creation of the sovereign wealth fund, and a four-day work week. The survey provides a primary account of how policymakers are thinking about the future of work and gives detailed insight into the specific forms of regulation we may see take place in the UK.