The nature of work

From the Agrarian era to AI

Change is inevitable. Societies transform from one state to another since human beings were born and evolved over time. Thousands of years ago the human being used to live and survive through the hunting of marginalized animals or by collecting vegetarian foods.

Life was so simple: you had to work hard or burn many calories for socio-economic uplift. Gradually man’s mental development evolved, and he domesticated animals and started horticultural activities, invented small digging tools to transform life into a new technological era.

This age continued for a long span of time across all societies of the world and slowly entered a new technological phase called agrarian society academically called the agrarian revolution. The economic activities gradually transformed to agrarian nature. The new social change made the old sources of employment vanish, but at the same time created new patterns of earning.

People remained engaged in agriculture and settled on the banks of big rivers, established permanent settlements, developed cities, started cultured life; civilization evolved; historically this transformation is often called as the “dawn of civilization” of humankind. The invention of the wheel, counting, numbers, and writing contributed to the socio-economic life of human development. Mesopotamian, Nile civilization, and in Pakistan the Indus Valley civilization, Mohenjo-Daro, Harappa and other civilizations are the signs of historic agricultural period and transformation. Sociologists and archeologists claim this socio-cultural change happened around 5000 to 8000 years back in history.

Social development kept on changing the social, economic and technological fabrics of society. The gigantic shift of agricultural development steadily switched societies later on to small industries and dragged people to an industrial phase called industrial revolution. The work which used to be done earlier by human beings in farms, shifted to steam and coal engines, and machines. A huge number of factories and industries were established. The agrarian mode of employment transformed to the industrial mode which resultantly left many people unemployed, as very few people were skilled in factory and mechanical works and the remaining vast majority of peasants stood unemployed. In industrial work there was the need for trained labourers.

Socialist movements started against the drastic change. Voices were raised for the marginalized farmers and deprived segment of the society. Societies were divided clearly between the “haves and have nots” classes. The capitalist class disproportionately exploited the labour class and drove it down to the subsistence level, and the poor used to work and get wages according to the wishes of their owners. Modern science was gradually proceeding to become mature and continued to invent computers, microchips and the internet, transforming societal structure to the post-industrial and information-based society.

It is thus extraordinarily important that the people should harmonize their capabilities with the modern trends and equip the new generation with AI-related technical jobs, like AI content writing, graphics, AI-engineering, e-business, freelancing and so on. However, the choice for social services is still intact in this era; if the young generation is trained to be critical, creative, communicative and collaborative, otherwise the devastating flood of AI would carry them away helplessly.

The technical and commercial activities swiftly started to shift to computer and internet tools. Consequently, the nature of jobs transformed from manual factory work to soft work carried through online sources and computers. Bureaucracy evolved and the job nature and employment once again changed; the people started to rely on social services, government jobs and skills in different spheres of life, like banking, teaching, health, district administration, police and so on, which was because the manual efforts bore no value at the time when computer and internet performed such tasks for far less energy than the energy consumed by human beings. 

The tremendous change not only turned the society’s socio-economic milieu but also increased the scope of social sciences; resultantly, a huge bulk of folk turned to these disciplines for degrees, and consequently natural sciences and life sciences lost their worth so that fewer people got admissions in applied sciences. The access to information approach or information-based society produced a great number of jobs for the university graduates. However, this move could not remain till long and a new and the latest change came forth to modify the nature of jobs from services to communication and managerial skills. The era is termed as the AI or Algorithmic era. The shift posed a serious threat to the countries facing high and unchecked population growth like Pakistan. The modern systemic change of AI demands extraordinary computer, communication and technical skills but the ground realities are completely negating this fact, which could ultimately lead to grave consequences.

Every new transformation makes old job patterns irrelevant but creates new opportunities simultaneously. As the algorithmic revolution has progressed through the plentiful communication sources like computers and the internet, those people could certainly survive perfectly who could align their skills with the latest tools, otherwise it may lead to disappointment.

It is thus extraordinarily important that the people should harmonize their capabilities with the modern trends and equip the new generation with AI-related technical jobs, like AI content writing, graphics, AI-engineering, e-business, freelancing and so on. However, the choice for social services is still intact in this era; if the young generation is trained to be critical, creative, communicative and collaborative, otherwise the devastating flood of AI would carry them away helplessly.