Ed Balls warns ‘intelligent’ robots now threaten white collar workers
Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls has warned that Britain faces the threat of invasion by an army of ‘intelligent’ robots – claiming that though this next generation of bots probably won’t enslave us they will steal our jobs.
Balls believes that recent technological advancements, which have given rise to Google’s driverless car and Amazon delivery drones, now pose a threat to the livelihoods of office staff, drivers and factory workers as machines increasingly take their place.
The Labour cabinet minister further argued that the disparities in income generation between those with ‘top-class’ qualifications and those without was fuelling ‘income inequality on a scale not seen since before the First World War.”
To respond to these new challenges Balls is calling for a ‘major expansion’ of technical colleges to train workers and to reduce reliance on ‘importing labour’.
Balls said: “We have seen profound technological change which is not just substituting for unskilled labour, but replacing traditional middle-income jobs too,” Mr Balls said.
“Two decades ago, we were right to worry that low-skilled jobs in sectors like manufacturing would go overseas. Now the advances in robotics and artificial intelligence means that intermediate skilled jobs will be lost too.
“Sophisticated machine tools and software are already reducing the need for routine jobs on production lines and in offices. And with 3D printers, not to mention Google’s driverless cars or Amazon’s drones, this trend is set to continue.”