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The rapid development of artificial intelligence technology has attracted widespread attention around the world, especially the impact on manufacturing employment. Like other fields, manufacturing employment faces challenges from AI technology.
In the long run, with the development of artificial intelligence technology, some manufacturing jobs will be replaced by machines, while also creating new jobs. How will the labor market change in the process?
For China, how to accelerate the pace of manufacturing transformation and upgrading through artificial intelligence technology, and how to deal with the impact of artificial intelligence on employment? This article analyzes this.
History of artificial intelligence
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a new technical science that studies and develops theories, methods, technologies and application systems for simulating, extending and expanding human intelligence. The purpose is to imitate human intelligence through machines without human intervention, so that machines have abilities similar to human perception, understanding, reasoning, judgment and learning.
Artificial intelligence technology began to start in the 60s of last century, after nearly 50 years of development, artificial intelligence technology has made certain achievements, and its application fields have covered all aspects of human life.
With the continuous improvement of computer processing power and the emergence of a large number of data resources and computing resources, artificial intelligence technology has gradually entered the application stage. At this stage, artificial intelligence technology has been widely used in intelligent robots, self-driving cars, assisted medical diagnosis and other fields.
Manufacturing is an important driver of economic growth, and employment issues have an important impact on economic growth. However, in the process of economic development, due to the influence of technological progress, industrial restructuring, institutional reform and other factors, the employment structure has undergone great changes.
For example, after the traditional manufacturing industry is affected, it will often lead to the reduction of traditional jobs, resulting in unemployment, but with the development of emerging industries and the application of emerging technologies, new jobs will continue to be generated.
In recent years, with the slowdown of China's economic growth, changes in the international trade environment, the disappearance of the demographic dividend and other factors, China's labor costs have risen rapidly. Therefore, some companies have begun to transfer some manufacturing to Vietnam, India and other countries. In this regard, the mainland government put forward the "Made in China 2025" strategy and the "Internet +" action plan. How will the implementation of this strategy affect manufacturing employment in the mainland?
The impact of artificial intelligence on the labor market
In the context of the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology, the impact on the labor market is both an opportunity and a challenge. From an employment perspective, the application of artificial intelligence technology will bring new jobs to workers, and in the process will create new jobs.
However, the impact of artificial intelligence technology on the employment of workers is not a simple linear process, but there is a certain complexity and uncertainty. First, because the combination of AI technology and manufacturing can bring new jobs, it is foreseeable that a large number of workers will shift from traditional manufacturing to emerging manufacturing in the future.
However, since AI technology is still in the development stage, the process of impact of AI technology on the labor market is a complex and uncertain process.
Second, as in other fields, the impact of AI technology on the labor market also has certain temporal and structural effects. As the integration of artificial intelligence technology and manufacturing deepens, its impact on the labor market will gradually become apparent. Compared with traditional manufacturing, the employment opportunities brought by artificial intelligence technology are mainly concentrated in emerging manufacturing fields. These emerging manufacturing fields are all high-tech and high-value-added products.
At present, China's manufacturing industry is transforming from quantity to quality, from simple manufacturing to integrated development of manufacturing and service. At the same time, China's manufacturing industry has been in the forefront of the world in terms of industrial structure, enterprise scale, production efficiency and product quality, but it still faces problems such as insufficient innovation ability, unreasonable industrial structure, and low production efficiency.
In order to promote the transformation and upgrading of China's manufacturing industry, in December 2016, the State Council issued the "Made in China 2025", proposing to build a new industrial development model with high-end equipment as the main body, advanced manufacturing technology as the support and intelligent manufacturing as the main feature by 2020.
In December 2016, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the Special Action Plan for the Development of Advanced Manufacturing Clusters (2016-2020), which clearly put forward the development goal of "accelerating the advanced industrial base and modernization of the industrial chain".
In order to achieve the above goals, China needs to accelerate the pace of manufacturing transformation and upgrading, promote the optimization and adjustment of industrial structure, and improve industrial efficiency and product quality.
Employment promotion policies
In the face of the impact of artificial intelligence on the job market, governments should take corresponding measures according to their own national conditions. For China, it should take positive measures from the following aspects:
First, strengthen vocational skills training, improve the quality of workers, and create more employment opportunities for them; The second is to strengthen the construction of education and training infrastructure to provide better education and training conditions for workers;
The third is to accelerate the improvement of the labor market system, further standardize the order of the labor market, and provide workers with a fairer, more stable and secure employment environment; The fourth is to improve the social insurance system so that workers can obtain fuller and higher-quality employment opportunities.
In the medium and long term, China should further promote the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry, enhance technological innovation capabilities, and promote the full mobility of the labor market and the optimal allocation of labor resources through institutional innovation.
In the context of the slowdown of the world economy and the intensification of trade frictions, China's economic growth has slowed down is an indisputable fact, and in this context, whether the labor market can remain stable will affect China's economic growth prospects.
On the one hand, with the acceleration of the intelligent transformation and upgrading of Chinese manufacturing enterprises, some traditional manufacturing jobs will be replaced, which will have a certain impact on employment. On the other hand, China has made significant progress in the research and development of artificial intelligence technology, which will also have an impact on the labor market.
On this basis, we use scenario analysis to forecast China's employment market and economic growth prospects in 2020 and 2030. Specifically, by 2025, China's unemployment rate will fall from 7.9% in 2019 to around 6.5%, and economic growth will increase from 6.3% in 2019 to around 5.8%. This result shows that AI technology has an important role for employment and economic growth.
Conclusions and policy recommendations
Based on summarizing the theoretical impact of the development of artificial intelligence technology on manufacturing employment, this paper analyzes the impact of artificial intelligence technology on China's manufacturing employment.
The study finds that the development of artificial intelligence technology will bring about changes in the structure of manufacturing employment, which will have a negative impact on manufacturing employment in the long run, but this impact will weaken with the further development of artificial intelligence technology.
As far as China is concerned, it is currently in a period of rapid industrialization and urbanization, and the conditions such as large demand space in the job market, abundant labor resources and relatively low wage levels have created favorable conditions for the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry.
Therefore, we should make full use of the opportunities brought by the development of artificial intelligence technology to promote the transformation and upgrading of China's manufacturing industry by improving the quality of labor, developing intelligent manufacturing, and improving the level of intelligent product design.
In addition, the government should also actively cultivate new momentum and new formats to promote the high-quality development of the manufacturing industry. Therefore, we should make full use of the opportunities created by artificial intelligence technology for the transformation and upgrading of China's manufacturing industry, and actively respond to the impact of artificial intelligence technology on employment.