Imagining A Corporation In 2050
was challenged by the editors here at Work: Reimagined to imagine what a corporation might look like in 2050.
My immediate response was to think ‘that’s a long ways off.’ But on the other hand, it does
take an incredibly long time to make foundational changes in society,
except when major disruptions occur, as with the rise of the Internet
over the past few decades, or the Black Death, when over 100 million
people died, leading to the shifts in power that ultimately sparked the
Renaissance.
So I am
resorting to a futurist sleight-of-hand to get to an answer in several
steps. I can’t just scramble to the roof of the house to see out over
the horizon: First, I have to build a ladder to climb up to the roof.
And the kind of ladders futurists build are indirect. Rather than simply
extrapolating from the present — which leads to very boring stories
about the future — I’ll pick several forces that could have a major
impact on the world of business in 2050, and imagine edge cases for each
one. This leads to scenarios — essentially, bedtime stories about the
future that don’t need to be true. They only need to help us think about
our future in a structured way.
The Three Forces That Will Impact Our Future
I’ve
selected three extremely pressing problems, and their impact on jobs
and work, to serve as the dimensions for scenario development: economic
inequality, climate change, and artificials (AI and robots).
Inequality
In
the past several years, the growing spread of income (and wealth)
inequality has been front page news, and a defining issue of our
economic era. Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century was perhaps the tipping point for economic inequality to ascend to the highest and broadest levels of public discourse.
In a report
released this month, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) reported that economic inequality continues to grow,
is leading to higher levels of poverty, and has reduced the rebound from
the Great Recession. As the report’s authors say,
In most countries, the gap between rich and poor is at its highest level since 30 years. Today, in OECD countries, the richest 10% of the population earn 9.6 times the income of the poorest 10%. In the 1980s, this ratio stood at 7:1 rising to 8:1 in the 1990s and 9:1 in the 2000s. In several emerging economies, particularly in Latin America, income inequality has narrowed, but income gaps remain generally higher than in OECD countries. During the crisis, income inequality continued to increase, mainly due to the fall in employment; redistribution through taxes and transfer partly offset inequality. However, at the lower end of the income distribution, real household incomes fell substantially in countries hit hardest by the crisis.
My
inclination is to hope for a world where inequality can be limited, but
because it is increasing at the present time — both by the rich getting
richer and the poor getting poorer — I’ve imagined two scenarios where
inequality is even worse 35 years from now, and one where it has been
checked in a scenario called Humania.
Climate Change
The
second force is climate change, specifically as a result of human
activities. I won’t even link to source information since we are beyond
that now, despite foot dragging by powerful, entrenched interests. Only
yesterday, Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon Mobile, continued to deny climate science,
and refused to join a group of European energy companies working on a
climate strategy in advance of UN climate talks planned for December.
However,
it continues to be possible that we can sidestep a worldwide extinction
through moderation of climate change, and therefore two of my scenarios
are based on that, while one — Collapseland — does not manage that.
The Impact of AI and Robots on Jobs and Work
The Pew Research Center created a ‘canvassing’ of 1,896 experts and asked them this question:
The economic impact of robotic advances and AI — Self-driving cars, intelligent digital agents that can act for you, and robots are advancing rapidly. Will networked, automated, artificial intelligence (AI) applications and robotic devices have displaced more jobs than they have created by 2025?
In the consequent report, AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs,
the results were mixed: Roughly half of the experts see a future in
which AI and robots will displace significant numbers of workers, and
roughly half that said they would not. I fell into the camp of yay-sayers: Those that think artificials will have a major impact on work, writing,
The central question of 2025 will be: What are people for in a world that does not need their labor, and where only a minority are needed to guide the ‘bot-based economy?
But
I believe that there will be necessary regulatory checks on AI and
robots. While we will allow autonomous vehicles to shuttle us around,
and algorithms to select the best candidates for a job — because AI is
better than us at that — people will remain wary of AIs. I don’t think
we’ll be handing over control of our nuclear weapons — or the strategic
direction of our companies — to artificials, no matter how smart. As a
result, in two scenarios AI is checked or limited in its impact, while
in one scenario — Neo-feudalistan — AI and robots become the primary
means of production.
Here,
then, is a Venn diagram of the three scenarios, where the green circle
covers the scenario in which both climate change and AI are limited, and
inequality is also addressed, the red covers the scenario in which
climate change is limited but inequality continues to run rampant, and
the blue circle covers the scenario in which AI is limited but
inequality isn’t. As a result, each scenario is unique.
Humania
Humania is the most egalitarian and democratic scenario.
After
mounting concern about inequality, the climate, and the inroads that AI
and robots were having on society, in the 2020s Western nations — and
later other developing countries — were hit by a ‘Human Spring.’ New
populist movements rose up and rejected the status quo, and demanded
fundamental change. At first the demands were uneven — some groups
emphasized climate, or inequality, or the right to work.
But
by the mid 2030s, all three forces were more-or-less equal planks in
the Humania platform. This led to mandated barriers to inequality — such
as limits on the multiple of the salaries of highest to lowest paid
workers, and progressive taxation so that the well-off paid much higher
taxes by percentage. Additionally, there were worldwide actions to limit
oil and coal use, and a dramatic shift to solar in the early 2020s.
Concerned that people would be pushed inexorably out of the job market,
governments build limits on AI use into international trade agreements,
based on a notion of the human right to work.
In
the year 2050, businesses in Humania are egalitarian, fast-and-loose,
and porous. Egalitarian in the sense that Humania workers have great
autonomy: They can choose who they want to work with and for, as well as
which initiatives or projects they’d like to work on.
They’re
fast-and-loose in that they are organized to be agile and lean, and in
order to do so, the social ties in businesses are much looser than in
the 2010s. It was those rigid relationships — for example, the one
between a manager and her direct reports — that, when repeated across
layers of a hierarchical organization, lead to slow-and-tight company.
Instead
of a pyramid, Humania’s companies are heterarchies: They are more like a
brain than an army. In the brain — and in fast-and-loose
companies — different sorts of connections and groupings of connected
elements can form. There is no single way to organize. People can choose
the sort of relationships that most make sense.
People’s
careers involve many different jobs and roles, and considerable periods
of time out of work. Basic universal income is guaranteed and generous
benefits for family leave are a regular feature of work, such as
paternity/maternity leave, looking after ill loved ones, and subsidized
opportunities for life-long learning. This is the porous side of things;
The edge of the company is permeable, and people easily leave and
return.
Instead of the
precarious nature of freelance and temp work of the 2010s, the use of
time-limited standard employment agreements — like Reid Hoffman’s ‘Tours of Duty’ model — allow security for workers and flexibility for companies.
Some
of the technologies of the day would be familiar to us, like smart
phones and some wearables. But you’d be hard-pressed to find a ‘desktop’
PC. The biggest change is ubiquitous connectivity based on 6G networks;
high-speed Internet is seen as basic public infrastructure — similar to
streets and bridges — across Humania. Augmented and virtual reality is
commonplace in work and entertainment.
Neo-feudalistan
In
Neo-feudalistan, the Human Spring uprising fizzled out like the Occupy
movement in the 2010s. As a result, the concentration of wealth and
power continues unabated, and political and economic power is held in
even fewer hands in 2050 than in 2015.
One
consequence to the good was that global corporations and the ruling
elite decided in the 2020s to counter the threat of climate change, and
as in Humania they pushed heavily for a world reliant on solar, averting
ecological collapse.
Corporations
are able to invest in ever-more-intelligent AI, driving down the prices
of food, goods, and services across the board in almost all industries.
While this yielded profits sufficient to maintain the system, it also
created companies with significantly smaller staffs. In fact, historians
of the time will point back to the Internet software giants of the
2010s — Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and other unicorns — as the
progenitors of this sort of company.
In
general, businesses in Neo-feudalistan are primarily driven by
carefully-managed artificials, configured to have deep expertise in
narrow domains, and overseen by small teams of highly trained experts in
those domains, and supported by scientists who understand the workings
of the artificials. As a result, a company that has 50,000 employees
today might have only 5,000 in 2050 while producing the same volume of
food, goods, or services.
Many
of the internal functions now performed by people are handled in
Neo-feudalistan companies by artificials, as well. Starting in the
2020s, companies handed over ‘human resources’ to algorithms relying on
big data because it had been shown that people are too cognitively
biased to make good hiring and promotion decisions. Relatively quickly,
other managerial functions were handed over, too. Like the companies of
Humania, Neo-feudalistan companies are brain-shaped, but most of the
neurons aren’t human. Of course, the people that remain — and the
companies’ owners — are extremely well-paid, and very skilled at getting
the most out of AI.
In
order to counter the revolutionary tendencies that may arise due to the
millions who are unemployed, a universal basic income has been enacted
across Neo-feudalistan. It provides enough to support a decent
lifestyle, and access to basic services like health care, education, and
transport. This was largely underwritten by massive reductions in cost
in production and energy. Basic goods sell for perhaps a tenth of their
2015 cost in Neo-feudalistan, because there are so few people in the
supply chain.
Collapseland
Collapseland is where
everything goes pear shaped. Dithering by governments and corporations
has allowed climate change to push the world into increased heat,
drought, and violent weather. The Human Spring of the 2020s led to a
conservative backlash and a suppression of the movement itself. It also
led to a suppression of advancements in AI, since it became associated
with the science orientation of the movement.
But
governments and corporations get their act together in the late 2020s
and 2030s to avert an extinction event via the global adoption of solar.
However, this only comes after a serious ecological catastrophe has
occurred. Inequality remains unchecked, and the poor become much poorer.
Collapseland
businesses are much like businesses of 2015. Most efforts are directed
toward basic requirements — like desalinating water, relocating people
away from low-lying or drought stricken areas, and struggling with food
production challenges. As a result, little innovation has taken place.
It’s no different from the company you work for today, except longer
hours, fewer co-workers, less pay, and much more dust. To increase
profits, corporations have cut staff and forced existing workers to work
harder.
2050 Is Closer Than You Think
This
exercise is — as I said — a futurist slight of hand. I picked three
forces, rolled the dice, and gamed it out. But here’s a takeaway:
Everything has to fall into place — inequality countered, climate change
overcome, and the acceptance of the human right to work (which means
limiting AI) — for something like Humania to come into existence.
For
our children and grandchildren to live happy, meaningful lives, and for
civilization itself to prosper and evolve, we will have to have that
Human Spring. Soon.
Source > medium
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