Foreword

In recent years, the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI), while enjoying the technical dividends brought by the development of AI, people should not ignore a series of social problems caused by it. Especially in the current employment situation is grim, youth employment pressure increases in the social background, “ AI unemployment ” It is worth further study. “ AI unemployment ” It is essentially a form of technological unemployment, which refers to the unemployment caused by the replacement of human labor by AI. Only on the surface, it seems to be a direct consequence of the application of AI technology, but its deep cause is the capitalist application of AI technology.

“ AI unemployment ” The phenomenon may become more prominent. To deal with this problem effectively, we should strengthen the career planning of young people, promote the quality improvement of young labor force, and adjust the training direction of future young talents appropriately. AI unemployment ” Risks and challenges.

(1) Strengthen career planning and promote quality improvement

Young people have the characteristics of strong curiosity and adaptability, avant-garde ideas, and affinity for new technologies, and the process of entering the labor market is more synchronized with the development and introduction of new technologies, and their knowledge and skills are more matched with new technologies. And, for now, it's just “ AI unemployment ” Early on, this leaves valuable time for young people to properly plan their careers and further develop their skills.

1. Young people should see the development trend of AI and reasonably plan their future careers. According to the Report on Youth Employment and Career Planning (2021), Chinese youth generally have a sense of career planning, but still lack a clear and definite career plan. While AI may replace routine tasks that are repetitive, mechanical, and programmable, it does create a lot of new jobs, such as data analysts, AI engineers, machine designers, and related ethics researchers. According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology "2019— According to the 2020 Artificial Intelligence Industry Talent Development Report, it is expected that the effective talent gap in China's AI industry will reach 300,000, the talent supply and demand ratio will be seriously unbalanced, and the market will have the most strong demand for technical positions such as algorithm research posts, application development posts and practical skills posts. In particular, the demand for talent in the direction of machine learning and computer vision is the most prominent at this stage. To a large extent, these jobs are intended for young people, because they are highly skilled and specialized, and short-term education and vocational training are not effective. For example, an ordinary worker who used to screw on an assembly line can hardly get a job as a data analyst through vocational training. Therefore, this talent gap can only be filled by educated youth who have targeted these careers from the start. Of course, this does not mean that all young people should be engaged in AI-related work, there are still many options for future careers, such as the rapid rise of new industries and new formats in recent years, which have spawned a large number of new careers such as e-sports players, network anchors, and network writers, providing more career choices.

2, we should step up to improve the quality of the young labor force, start from the difficulty of AI replacement to cultivate people's competitive advantages, and enhance the ability to resist unemployment risks. "Toward 2035: The Future of 400 Million Jobs in the Digital Economy," released by the Boston Consulting Group, points out that mastering specific professional skills (especially the application of digital technologies), as well as human interaction, creativity, and other abilities that AI cannot yet replace humans on a large scale will form a competitive advantage in the future. In addition, with the wider application of AI, the future society will be a society that coexists with AI and cooperates with man and machine, which requires young people to have a higher AI literacy, that is, the ability to understand, make good use of and reflect on AI, so that AI can truly “ For my use ” .

(2) Appropriate adjustment of the future training direction of young talents

The future era is definitely the era of AI, and the training of future young talents will inevitably require appropriate adjustments for AI, so that young people can prepare for future life and work. Although AI has spawned a large number of new jobs, if young people lack relevant work skills, no amount of job opportunities will be of no avail for them, so they can only be qualified for new jobs through professional education and training. So, in the face of “ AI unemployment ” And the trend of social intelligence, the need to adjust the educational structure, focusing on the training of the following three types of young talents.

1, to cultivate professional application-oriented talents to meet the needs of market positions. At present, China's labor market has a structural problem of employment in which the supply of medium and low-skilled labor exceeds the demand while the supply of high-skilled labor exceeds the demand, especially the talent gap of high-tech jobs related to AI is large. The training of young talents should make efforts in this direction and adjust the development direction of talent training based on market demand.

2, to cultivate research talents to meet the development of AI. The future international competition is the competition of science and technology, and the key of science and technology competition lies in the competition of young science and technology talents. Therefore, in order to gain an advantage in the AI industry competition, China must speed up the training of a large number of AI scientific research talents, especially those who have strong innovation ability and can break through the bottleneck of core technologies. The report of the Party's 20th National Congress clearly stated that, “ We will accelerate the development of national strategic human resources, and strive to train more masters, strategic scientists, leading scientific and technological personnel and innovative teams, young scientific and technological personnel, outstanding engineers, craftsmen of major countries, and highly skilled personnel. ” The Medium - and Long-Term Youth Development Plan (2016—2025) issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and The State Council also stressed that, We should deepen education reform and focus on cultivating young talents. We should cultivate and support a group of top-notch young talents in key disciplines. In the high-level research universities and research institutes advantage of basic disciplines to build a number of national youth talent culture medium. ”

3, to cultivate “ AI+” Compound talents. First of all, it is necessary to cultivate interdisciplinary talents who master the basic knowledge and thinking mode related to AI and can use AI in different work scenarios. The future of society will be more intelligent, and living in an environment shaped by AI will inevitably require us to master such abilities. Secondly, it is necessary to cultivate the soft skills such as perception, creativity, adaptability, critical ability, flexibility of thinking, social communication, negotiation and problem solving of compound talents. This is a human skill, and it is difficult to be replaced by AI in the short term. The power of the humanities and social sciences will be brought into play here. In short, to meet “ AI+” In order to meet the needs of the development of the AI era, education should transition from professional personnel training to comprehensive personnel training. Therefore, the existing curriculum content, teaching methods, teachers and other aspects should be adjusted accordingly. In the face of rapid technological development and social change, a more comprehensive education should also include lifelong learning and psychological capacity-building, which are essential for the sustainable development of young people. Colleges and universities should update the teaching content in time, promote the connection of majors and courses with market demand, and improve the effectiveness of education. AI education should also be extended to the compulsory education stage, and AI general courses should be set up as soon as possible, so that every young person has a more equitable and good starting point.

(3) Inhibiting the substitution effect of AI in industrial upgrading

To achieve industrial upgrading through technological innovation is the main driving force and necessary way to promote the high-quality development of China's economy. From the perspective of industrial upgrading, AI replacement does not necessarily lead to “ AI unemployment ” . On the one hand, the young people replaced by AI can successfully achieve job transformation through targeted training organized within the enterprise; On the other hand, creating a large number of new job opportunities for youth through industrial upgrading provides a realistic path to curb the substitution effect of AI.

1. A complete vocational training system should be established within the enterprise, and young employees should be regularly trained to update their knowledge and ability system, and actively adapt to the development of AI technology. Enterprises should take the initiative to strengthen exchanges with scientific research institutes and explore various forms of school-enterprise cooperation such as the construction of majors, courses, and internship and training bases. At the same time, efforts should be made to cultivate young people's sense of competition and crisis awareness, actively improve their own innovative thinking, data analysis, computer application and other core capabilities, and actively adapt to the development of The Times.

2. Redundant personnel should be transferred directly or through retraining to avoid direct layoffs through internal digestion. In the process of AI automation transformation and upgrading, while considering the cost effectiveness, enterprises should be encouraged to take the initiative to assume social responsibility and slow down. AI unemployment ” Bring social impact. The unemployment caused by the introduction of AI technology is largely due to the mismatch between existing skills and AI technology. In principle, vocational training can help employees complete the skills transformation and become competent for new jobs. At the same time, we should pay close attention to the impact of labor market trends and industrial upgrading on youth employment, rationally regulate the introduction of technology and equipment, and ensure the steady progress of new technology upgrading and transformation.

3. To achieve innovation-driven development and create more new jobs. Enterprises should take technological innovation as the driving force, actively develop new products, expand a larger sales market, reconstruct a new AI industry model and ecology, and provide more new jobs and new positions for unemployed young people while pursuing high-quality industrial development. At the same time, industrial upgrading and industrial transfer should be combined to form a stepwise development between developed and less developed areas in the eastern and western regions, give play to regional advantages, and bring more development opportunities and employment options to young people.

Summary

In response to “ AI unemployment ” When the impact, choosing the development path and regulating the speed of technological development can only suspend the risk of unemployment, and through reasonable institutional arrangements, the problem can be fundamentally solved. But at the same time, we should also recognize that this is a long-term goal and requires a process. The Government should do its best to make gradual progress because “ Even if the development level is higher and the financial resources are stronger in the future, we must not set too high a target, make excessive guarantees, and resolutely prevent people from falling into the trap. Welfarism ’ A trap for lazy people. ” Common prosperity is an essential requirement of socialism and an important feature of Chinese-style modernization. Promoting AI-style common prosperity with AI development and solving the problem of AI unemployment with AI-style common prosperity will become another profound reflection of China's institutional advantages.