The coronavirus pandemic will significantly speed up the transition of humanity to a new stage of development, but at the same time it can cause severe social tension, scientists from the Higher School of Economics and Moscow State University Leonid Grinin, Anton Grinin and Andrey Korotaev believe.
The pandemic has increased the role of medicine. Huge amounts of money, both public and private, have been spent on its smooth operation and development all over the world. The development of vaccines has given impetus to innovative breakthroughs in biotechnology and genetic engineering. And the need for isolation and social distancing has provoked the introduction of online technologies, including in areas such as remote medical care or remote psychological assistance, biometrics (in particular, contactless).
Distance education, work from home, online fitness, online services have appeared. On the one hand, it seems to be convenient, but, on the other hand, if things go on like this, then you can do without workers altogether. Lectures will be read by voice assistants, workouts in gyms will be carried out by robots. They also consult patients in polyclinics. Should we expect serious transformations in the labor market and the extinction of traditional mass professions in the coming years?
Pavel Seleznev, First Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Mass Communications, Professor of the Department of Political Science at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, agrees that the pandemic has accelerated progress in medicine and put the effectiveness of modern healthcare systems around the world in the focus of public attention. It is also quite clear that communication technologies, especially in the field of remote communication, have gained incredible popularity.
“But in fairness, it should be noted that the transfer of communications to the Internet did not begin yesterday, so the covid epidemic only accelerated this process. The same can be said about distance work and distance education. However, to say that distance learning will capture the whole world following the epidemic, it would be wrong. Today, as studies show, the number of remote workers in Russian business does not exceed 10 percent. And about a third of employees combine office work and remote work. At the same time, it will obviously not become dominant, because so many professions cannot be translated in a new format. As for distance education, many teachers, students and their parents agree that it does not provide a high quality of knowledge. And elite education will remain full-time,” the expert emphasizes.
As for the impact of Internet technologies and artificial intelligence on the employment structure, it is unlikely that it will undergo global changes in the coming years. “I have probably heard talk about the disappearance of such professions as a courier, contact center employee or accountant for at least 10 years. But contact center employees and accountants are still in demand in the labor market, and experiments with robotic accountants and lawyers often end failure and financial losses, and the demand for couriers, for example, is only growing,” adds Seleznev.
He also notes that the epidemic has raised new pressing issues of social governance and democracy on the agenda. In many countries, the restrictions imposed on citizens are met with sharp resistance. “Today’s Western societies are less and less consistent with the needs of people to improve the quality of life, as various sociology clearly demonstrates. And new technologies in the field of communications and artificial intelligence can help solve these problems by creating a transparent and publicly accessible information environment,” the expert believes.
Lyudmila Ivanova-Shvets, Associate Professor of the Human Resources Management Department of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation, sees the main risks of a post-pandemic society in increased depressive moods.
“Live communication is leaving, some groups of the population, especially young people, have a new reality, which can lead to psychological problems, stress, depression, psychological burnout. And on the part of business, control programs are being strengthened, which leads to an invasion of privacy, and this additionally negatively affects society,” the expert is sure. She also draws attention to the fact that the transition to new forms of remote employment in the future will indeed have an impact on many areas of the economy. For example, the need for large office space is decreasing, which could lead to a decline in the business real estate segment. In addition, offices are not only beautiful offices, but also thousands of jobs for people who support the functioning of work places – from computer scientists and secretaries to security guards and cleaners.