By Adrian Wooldridge
In October 1996, at his party's last congress before the election that would see him as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair tried to define the essence of the New Labour Party. He began by contrasting his party with the dying conservative government, before summarizing his three priorities for power. These were, in turn, "education, education and education". The applause was enthusiastic – and, unlike at recent Labour Party rallies, genuine.
The idea that "education is the best economic policy" was at the heart of the progressive negotiation with the market. President Bill Clinton declared that "the information age is, first of all, an age of education." The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have insisted that education is the golden key to growth and inclusion. Universities experienced the longest period of expansion in their history as governments scrambled to ensure that at least half of their young people would graduate.
So, here's the final message for education from the business elite: Take your degree and throw it away. Amazon.com, one of the trend-setting companies in the business world, recently announced that it will lay off nearly 10% of its staff. Other companies that have decided to proceed with layoffs are consulting companies (Booz Allen Hamilton), car manufacturers (General Motors), retail companies (Target) and service companies (United Parcel Service).
Graduates are entering the most difficult job market in recent years, with positions for young people with no previous work experience disappearing and excellent students fighting for peanuts. Even new PhDs in economics no longer have a full employment rate. However, at the same time, opportunities for skilled work for workers are increasing. Companies report a shortage of workers in healthcare, hospitality, and, most importantly, engineering and construction. Ford Motor CEO Jim Farley noted in a LinkedIn post last June on "the essential economy" that in the U.S. there is a shortage of 600,000 factory workers and 500,000 construction workers, and that 400,000 auto technicians will be needed over the next three years.
The reason for this asymmetry between the jobs for the so-called "white collars" and "blue collars" (ed. white-collar, office workers and executives / blue-collar, workers) is simple: the rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The technology automates large parts of cognitive work, starting with things that involved routine tasks like filling out forms and identifying patterns, and moving quickly down the chain to include more creative tasks. At the same time, however, an army of workers is required to build the physical infrastructure of the new Artificial Intelligence economy, server farms, data centers and other similar facilities.
New research from the National Bureau of Economic Research examines the impact of technological innovation on labour demand over the past two centuries. The authors conclude that, until now, innovation has steadily increased the demand for occupations with a higher education degree, higher pay, and a higher percentage of women working. By mechanizing cognitive work, Artificial Intelligence could be the first major technology to reverse this trend. The researchers predict that, over the next decade, the demand for highly educated jobs will fall relative to occupations that receive the average salary by 0.59% per year for supervisors, 0.29% for professionals and 0.85% for office positions. Occupations with a higher percentage of women will shrink by 0.53% per year relative to male-dominated jobs.
Employees who will survive the change in the world of work are not likely to come out unscathed. Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, predicts that the workforce of the future will consist of a mix of "digital people" and "biological people" as companies spend trillions of dollars on hiring, training, and employing digital nurses, accountants, and marketers. The rest of the office workers will not only have to put up with watching and criticism from the machines. They will also have to compete with "digital people" who never get tired, have no problems to deal with at home, and never ask for a salary increase.
However, a look at history shows that an alienated educated elite acts as social dynamite. There is no rage greater than the rage of people who have seen their aspirations for a better life crash into the rocks of reality. And there is no more dangerous group than the one that has the ability to organize and mobilize. Political scientist Samuel Huntington, of Harvard University, even proposed a rule: The higher the level of education of the unemployed or alienated people, the more extreme the destabilizing behaviour that arises.
Both the French and Russian Revolutions were, above all, the work of educated people who did not find a place in society commensurate with their expectations. Alexis de Tocqueville described the French Revolution as a revolution of rising expectations. Voltaire claimed that "books were the ones that did it all." Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky came from a long line of alienated Russian intellectuals who combined utopian dreams with a tendency toward terrorism.
Radicalism did not come only from the left. The Nazi Party drew many of its cadres from the educated bourgeoisie, which had seen its wealth eroded by the high inflation of the early 1920s and felt threatened by organized labour. Perhaps a quarter of German academics were members of the Nazi Party, a percentage higher than that of the general population. Heinrich Himmler's elite SS battalion recruited many graduates and other educated professionals.
The pattern also applies to more recent revolutions. The Arab Spring was led mainly by university graduates who found that their years of study did not help them find stable jobs. And another spring, or perhaps autumn, may be just around the corner: In recent months, frustrated young people have led anti-government protests in Indonesia, Nepal, Peru, Morocco and Madagascar.
Of course, modern Western countries have much stronger lines of defense against unrest than Germany in the 1930s or France in the 1780s. And as Artificial Intelligence hits educated people as producers, it will benefit consumers by reducing the costs of, for example, drafting wills or bookkeeping. However, the AI revolution is coming so fast that politicians don't have time to understand it, let alone plan how to deal with its consequences. What was once a "haven," office seats, increasingly looks like it's made of playing cards, and what seemed like a sensible investment, a university education, may be a waste of money.
In recent decades, a significant radicalization of the educated class has already been observed. The election of Zoran Mamdani as mayor of New York reminds us that graduates have been rallying around left-wing candidates since the end of the Obama era. We also don't comment enough on the fact that a generation of educated men is rallying around President Donald Trump: J DVance likes to show off his knowledge, and Kevin Roberts, head of the conservative Heritage Foundation, always adds his PhD after his name. The ideas that radicals, both left and right, are flirting with are becoming more and more extreme. And the intensity with which they support them is becoming more and more intense. The AI revolution is adding fuel — and a lot — to an already raging fire.
Adaptation – Editing: Lydia Roubopoulou
