In the light of the ever-growing role of technology foresight and forecasting in strategic thinking [2], the most recent German national Foresight processFootnote 4 identifies future global social challenges relating to Germany that will be relevant between now and 2030 with an emphasis on the social consequences [3–5]. On basis of the findings of this German Foresight Process (Cycle II), the basic assumption of this paper is that the increasing use of autonomous computer systems has extensive impacts on the working environment, on education and training, as well as on economic and social systems. Notably in that it is rather an “activity” that can be replaced by computers, and not an entire “profession”, substitution of human capital is not limited to low-skilled fields of activity.
Excursion: the German foresight cycle II
BMBF Foresight Cycle II (2012–2014)Footnote 5 is complementary to Cycle I and focuses on changed needs resulting e.g. from social transformation. The overriding aim of BMBF Foresight Cycle II is to identify social challenges at the interfaces between society and technology in the form of innovation seeds. As emphasised in the High-Tech Strategy 2020, the main innovation drivers are considered to be “new technologies, services, and new social developments or changes, but also global challenges to which solutions and responses need to be found” [6].
In light of this, the current Cycle II Foresight (2012–2014) identifies future global social challenges relating to Germany that will be relevant between now and 2030 with an emphasis on future social trends and challenges. With the completion of the search phase of the second cycle of the BMBF Foresight process, exciting results concerning future social and technological developments with a time horizon of 2030 are now available. The process addresses possible upheavals in the fields of health, research and innovation, education, business, politics and work. To this end, suitable knowledge banks are accessed, combined and prepared in appropriate ways. Apart from the original task of Foresight – to identify new trends and topics – the current challenges of Foresight processes lie in filtering a glut of multimedia information on a project-related basis, i.e. in deciding which of the many developments that are publicised around the world are particularly relevant to the ministry. Therefore, in addition to the departments’ Foresight activities, BMBF Foresight Cycle II has concentrated on determining possible fields of action for overarching global social challenges.
The methodological approach is based on the assumption that innovations are resulting from a combination of technological developments (“technology push”) and social requirements (“demand pull”). Therefore the method was consisting of three work stages and resulted in three separate result reports (see Fig. 1).
The first stage (A) comprises a balanced inventory of social changes that have a bearing on the future and which are significant to persons and organisations promoting research and innovation. It identified social trends (60 trend profiles) and derived social challenges (seven topic areas) [3].
The second stage (B) provides a comprehensive account of 11 research and technology perspectives with a generally consistent level of complexity and granularity. It is therefore well suited to providing non-technical people with an overview, while offering specialists in particular disciplines detailed insights into neighbouring fields [4].
The stories from the third stage (C) link social challenges to research and technology perspectives. This highlights possible socio-technical lines of development. Any discrepancies between the possible developments as portrayed in the stories, and desirable developments from the reader’s point of view, are indicative of organisational tasks which will ultimately need to be addressed via a society-wide debate. The stories are intended to provoke such discussions [5]. Hence, apart from the original task of Foresight – to identify new trends and topics – the current German Foresight process links social challenges to research and technology perspectives, portrayed in short stories and trend profiles that are intended to offer food for thought and discourse, ranging from issues such as “do it yourself Germany” to “welfare competence” and “work colleague computer” [5]. On the latter the results of the German Foresight process demonstrate that a broad discussion of the issue is necessary to fully and adequately address future societal needs.
In the education sector these developments may have disruptive effects on lecturers and their attendance-based classes: they might be replaced by online lectures and, for classical universities, the question will arise of whether long-standing curricula are even still appropriate. Online universities may offer a more appropriate flexible, modular system instead of fixed curricula. It is possible that businesses will express their requirements in the form of specific teaching modules, and guarantee jobs for a certain number of graduates. As a result, assessment criteria and the reputation possibilities for universities may change fundamentally.
Great challenges will arise here for career guidance, for higher education course offerings, for the design of educational content and for the identification of future job market requirements.
The concept of general education will change, creating the challenge of regularly reviewing learning content for schools, vocational training, and university study.
However, because of the semantic arrangement of information, not only people but also computers are increasingly able to use and intelligently evaluate the internet as a knowledge pool in an automated manner. Ever greater volumes of data are available in machine-readable form – not least mass data (big data) from social networks that helps computers to learn how people think and take decisions.
As humans increasingly deal with robots on an everyday basis, contact between humans may decrease. This could create problems for citizens’ social integration – or it may finally provide the necessary freedom and opportunity for person-to-person contact.
From an economic perspective, large companies in particular might stand to benefit from efficiency increases brought about by automationFootnote 6: While company profits might increase, they would be generated by ever fewer employees and some jobs might become obsolete. Ever fewer people may be required in the value creation process [7].
In the past, many jobs were created in the service sector, but these could themselves be heavily affected in the future [8]. The potential for substitution varies heavily among the different occupational skill levels, but low-skilled activities might be more affected by displacement effect. Critics fear that the digital revolution will fail to create enough new jobs, and that the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few will increase [7].
If computers or robots will be able to perform jobs in the future, which are currently done by humans, as in the manufacture of mobile phones in Asian low-wage countries, this will have a massive impact on global economic structuresFootnote 7. With intelligent manufacturing processes, the factories could return to the sales markets, creating enormous opportunities for Europe.