Our world has been overtaken by technology since it touches practically every element of life. It has facilitated greater access to information and made it possible for online communities to grow naturally on a global scale.
Young people also have a very difficult time finding employment since they may not have access to technology or the internet, may find it challenging to learn the requisite digital skills, and may have trouble accessing online job prospects.
Technology has the potential to play a big role in solving young unemployment, providing opportunities as well as obstacles. To capitalize on the good effects of technology, young people must embrace continual learning and gain necessary skills, while governments must ensure that technology is accessible to all, encouraging equitable economic growth.
The following video gives the answers of the questions from the perspective of Dan Gillmor (American technology writer and co-founder of News Co/Lab) and Bennett Silvyn (a student in ASU).
Young people also have a very difficult time finding employment since they may not have access to technology or the internet, may find it challenging to learn the requisite digital skills, and may have trouble accessing online job prospects.
Technology has the potential to play a big role in solving young unemployment, providing opportunities as well as obstacles. To capitalize on the good effects of technology, young people must embrace continual learning and gain necessary skills, while governments must ensure that technology is accessible to all, encouraging equitable economic growth.
- How does technological development affect unemployment rates?
- What skills will people need in the future to get jobs?
- How can people from under-developed regions obtain these countries?
- Could technological advancement be too fast for people to keep up?
The following video gives the answers of the questions from the perspective of Dan Gillmor (American technology writer and co-founder of News Co/Lab) and Bennett Silvyn (a student in ASU).
Video Script
Dan Gillmor: I am Dan Gillmor, and I'm working as a Professor of Practice at Arizona State and co-founder of the News CoLab.
History has shown again and again that technology has profound impacts on what people do in their work. Sometimes it eliminates whole categories of what we call "work" and creates the conditions for new categories. Robotics has eliminated huge numbers of manufacturing jobs and will continue to do so. Robotics and AI are part of the same system of technology; really, I don't know what is going to happen with the next few generations of it, but I think it's going to be really interesting to watch.
Bennet: I'm a rising senior at ASU's Cronkite School of Journalism, currently majoring in Sports Journalism with a minor in Business, Sports management, and Marketing. For now, I don't think it's a huge worry, but I think it will be in the future. I'm not worried as much for myself, especially now that I'm in college, because I kind of get to learn all the technology as I go.
Gillmor: Chat GPT and tools like it are part of a separate trend from society in general, which is the collection of power and money in the hands of a very few people who now exert enormous power over everyone else. The imbalance in wealth that already exists in the United States and other so-called Capitalist countries has never been greater than today. And getting worse and worse. When I see the word worse, I don't think it's a good thing. That wealth is being accumulated at the very top by a very, very few people. I think that's dangerous. I think that's going to help kill democracy, or what's left of it. I think that's a tremendously dangerous trend, and Chad GPT and other companies like this are going exactly in that direction. So I see these tools as part of a trend to again accumulate power and wealth in the hands of a very, very few people at the expense of almost everyone else. So in that context, I don't know what to say to somebody young in a world like the one we're in where monopolies are being created in every field we can see. The best advice is to find something where you're, one of the people who's able to make money from the monopolist.
Bennett: I think for me, it's time management and just getting along with people, both because, at the end of the day, you want work to feel fun and to kind of be like a family. And at least that's a work environment that I want to be in. Especially in the journalism world, adjusting to kind of the AI chats and that stuff. Because while those can write stories, and they can, you know, you can say, Write me a story about XYZ, and it'll spit it out, it won't be perfect. Yeah, with this type of technology, I'm sure it'll get even more advanced than it is now; kind of everything's computerized, and I'm sure, who knows, in 20 years, it'll be even more advanced than we could ever think of. Corporate leaders see it mostly as a way to eliminate employment.If something is good enough, it wins over things that are better for the bulk of the marketplace.
And that there might be a high-end product, and then there's the good-enough level. And if chat GPT and other tools are good enough at writing things, that sounds right, because normally they would pay a writer.Then they're going to stop paying writers and use that because it's good enough. Once you've paid for the machine, you don't have to pay for it again. Machines don't take sick breaks or sick days.
Dan Gillmor: There were teachers who were really freaking out about students using calculators. That's legitimate in one sense if the student doesn't know how to add and doesn't know what the process of arithmetic and basic math is if people are completely ignorant of that. I don't think that's a good thing. I think one should understand basic math, but to say don't use a calculator is silly, and more and more things are like that. I mean, I grew up at a time when people knew how to fix cars and car engines. And now that cars are systems of computers on wheels, everything is now specialized, for good and for bad. I think the biggest thing for all of us is to not fall into the trap of getting too excited about the latest shiny objects by people who want to sell us something, whether it's products, ideology, or faith of some kind. No one, except a super genius, can be an expert at more than a couple of things. The Renaissance person who knew lots of things about lots of things—that's hard to be anymore. I think technology is going to help us solve some of the problems we're creating. And I think technology has helped enormously.
I think we should be appropriately amazed at what we can do, including how to organize ourselves against the worst parts of technology. This is not a technological question. It's a policy question. We don't have to say, Yeah, sure. Microsoft and a few other companies can own the contents of all our work for the last 50 years and use it to charge us high prices to have them read it back to us. We don't have to accept a few billionaires deciding who's allowed to speak in public. These are political decisions that have been made by default, but they've been made. And we can unmake those. I hope we do.
Bennet: When I was a kid, I didn't have an Iphone until I was in middle school. And teachers when we were growing up were saying, ‘You're not going to have a calculator in your pocket’. And now we do.
I'm sure it's, um, too fast for everyone. I know, especially with COVID, that a lot of the elderly have kind of lost their savings and are now having to go back into the workforce, which for them sure is crazy because they're dealing with technology that they've never seen before. And even for myself, there's still stuff I'm trying to understand and kind of get used to using.
Well, my boss now is not very technologically advanced. So I've had to help her a lot. And in terms of that, it's just kind of interesting. There's just, I think nowadays, a huge technological gap between the kids that are kind of entering the workforce and the adults that are already in it. And some of them seem very set in their ways.
Dan Gillmor: I can't keep track of technology and I spend my life trying.
Dan Gillmor: I am Dan Gillmor, and I'm working as a Professor of Practice at Arizona State and co-founder of the News CoLab.
History has shown again and again that technology has profound impacts on what people do in their work. Sometimes it eliminates whole categories of what we call "work" and creates the conditions for new categories. Robotics has eliminated huge numbers of manufacturing jobs and will continue to do so. Robotics and AI are part of the same system of technology; really, I don't know what is going to happen with the next few generations of it, but I think it's going to be really interesting to watch.
Bennet: I'm a rising senior at ASU's Cronkite School of Journalism, currently majoring in Sports Journalism with a minor in Business, Sports management, and Marketing. For now, I don't think it's a huge worry, but I think it will be in the future. I'm not worried as much for myself, especially now that I'm in college, because I kind of get to learn all the technology as I go.
Gillmor: Chat GPT and tools like it are part of a separate trend from society in general, which is the collection of power and money in the hands of a very few people who now exert enormous power over everyone else. The imbalance in wealth that already exists in the United States and other so-called Capitalist countries has never been greater than today. And getting worse and worse. When I see the word worse, I don't think it's a good thing. That wealth is being accumulated at the very top by a very, very few people. I think that's dangerous. I think that's going to help kill democracy, or what's left of it. I think that's a tremendously dangerous trend, and Chad GPT and other companies like this are going exactly in that direction. So I see these tools as part of a trend to again accumulate power and wealth in the hands of a very, very few people at the expense of almost everyone else. So in that context, I don't know what to say to somebody young in a world like the one we're in where monopolies are being created in every field we can see. The best advice is to find something where you're, one of the people who's able to make money from the monopolist.
Bennett: I think for me, it's time management and just getting along with people, both because, at the end of the day, you want work to feel fun and to kind of be like a family. And at least that's a work environment that I want to be in. Especially in the journalism world, adjusting to kind of the AI chats and that stuff. Because while those can write stories, and they can, you know, you can say, Write me a story about XYZ, and it'll spit it out, it won't be perfect. Yeah, with this type of technology, I'm sure it'll get even more advanced than it is now; kind of everything's computerized, and I'm sure, who knows, in 20 years, it'll be even more advanced than we could ever think of. Corporate leaders see it mostly as a way to eliminate employment.If something is good enough, it wins over things that are better for the bulk of the marketplace.
And that there might be a high-end product, and then there's the good-enough level. And if chat GPT and other tools are good enough at writing things, that sounds right, because normally they would pay a writer.Then they're going to stop paying writers and use that because it's good enough. Once you've paid for the machine, you don't have to pay for it again. Machines don't take sick breaks or sick days.
Dan Gillmor: There were teachers who were really freaking out about students using calculators. That's legitimate in one sense if the student doesn't know how to add and doesn't know what the process of arithmetic and basic math is if people are completely ignorant of that. I don't think that's a good thing. I think one should understand basic math, but to say don't use a calculator is silly, and more and more things are like that. I mean, I grew up at a time when people knew how to fix cars and car engines. And now that cars are systems of computers on wheels, everything is now specialized, for good and for bad. I think the biggest thing for all of us is to not fall into the trap of getting too excited about the latest shiny objects by people who want to sell us something, whether it's products, ideology, or faith of some kind. No one, except a super genius, can be an expert at more than a couple of things. The Renaissance person who knew lots of things about lots of things—that's hard to be anymore. I think technology is going to help us solve some of the problems we're creating. And I think technology has helped enormously.
I think we should be appropriately amazed at what we can do, including how to organize ourselves against the worst parts of technology. This is not a technological question. It's a policy question. We don't have to say, Yeah, sure. Microsoft and a few other companies can own the contents of all our work for the last 50 years and use it to charge us high prices to have them read it back to us. We don't have to accept a few billionaires deciding who's allowed to speak in public. These are political decisions that have been made by default, but they've been made. And we can unmake those. I hope we do.
Bennet: When I was a kid, I didn't have an Iphone until I was in middle school. And teachers when we were growing up were saying, ‘You're not going to have a calculator in your pocket’. And now we do.
I'm sure it's, um, too fast for everyone. I know, especially with COVID, that a lot of the elderly have kind of lost their savings and are now having to go back into the workforce, which for them sure is crazy because they're dealing with technology that they've never seen before. And even for myself, there's still stuff I'm trying to understand and kind of get used to using.
Well, my boss now is not very technologically advanced. So I've had to help her a lot. And in terms of that, it's just kind of interesting. There's just, I think nowadays, a huge technological gap between the kids that are kind of entering the workforce and the adults that are already in it. And some of them seem very set in their ways.
Dan Gillmor: I can't keep track of technology and I spend my life trying.