Female Power Will Dominate
In a 2019 post titled “Moving Toward a New Social Dynamic,” I argued that the power dynamic between the male and female sexes is changing. Such changes are affording women more power in the male/female relationship and are leading our societies to establish fairer norms and equal rights and opportunities for females, helping females to overcome the oppression imposed on them by males and the requirements of farming Homosaipians societies. In that post, among other factors, I attributed the shift in social dynamics to changes in survival requirements, arguing that physical strength (as a male advantage) no longer plays a critical role in our survival and having a decent life today mostly depends on mental and cognitive capabilities where men do not hold a clear cut advantage over women. Hence, that should give women more control and power, induce changes in sexual relationships, and lead to a better and more equal balance of power between the sexes.
The balance of power will be tilting to favor women more in the next few decades. As AI takes over more jobs, we will have more jobless males and more employed females.
Since then, much has changed both in my understanding of the world and the world itself, rendering my old predictions, to some extent, obsolete. With advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI), it is predicted that most of the jobs available to humans will go to AI in the not-so-distant future[1]. Many mechanical jobs are already gone, and humans are replaced with some kind of machine (e.g., assembly line workers). Soon, we expect to have fully automated burger and fast food joints where intelligent machines completely replace humans whose jobs were mostly mechanical (e.g., burger filliping, sales, etc.). The AI replacement of humans, however, does not stop at the mechanical level. It is predicted that in the near future, even analytical jobs (e.g., stock trading, data analytics, accounting function, radiologist function, etc.) are not safe from being overtaken by AI [2]. Today most stock exchanges are conducted algorithmically, and humans have started to trust AI agent utilitarian recommendations over human agent suggestions [3]. Not far from now, analytical AI will take over most analytical jobs that rely on humans’ mental and cognitive skills. And that is how my old prediction became obsolete because it heavily relied on the role of cognitive capabilities in driving the projected changes in the dynamic between sexes and, consequently, human societies.
Accordingly, it is predicted that the kind of jobs that rely on human empathy and emotions are the ones that will be safe from AI invasion in the foreseeable future [4], at least until conscious empathic AI becomes a reality. Now, it is not hard to see a future where people with better emotional intelligence and stronger empathic capabilities will be in demand. They will be the ones who drive the future and will hold power over others. Generally, females enjoy higher emotional intelligence levels than males. They also can relate and empathize with others much better than males. The balance of power will be tilting to favor women more in the next few decades. As AI takes over more jobs, we will perhaps have fewer jobs available for humans; among those jobs that are left, more goes to women than men. Hence, we will have more jobless males and more employed females; Women will hold much of the economic power not driven by AI and become the de facto breadwinners. Consequently, they will take over more powerful roles in charge of consequential decisions. It appears that women will finally have their share of apparent power, and the male oppression of women will end worldwide.
The question is, how will women treat men when the power balance is completely tilted in their favor? Will they be merciful or vengeful for all their years of being oppressed? I tend to think we will see much more compassion and mercifulness than vengefulness in the envisioned future.
References
1- Huang, Ming-Hui and Roland T. Rust (2018), “Artificial Intelligence in Service,” Journal of Service Research, 21 (2), 155–172.
2- Huang, Ming-Hui, Roland T. Rust, and Maksimovic V. (2019), “The Feeling Economy: Managing in the Next Generation of Artificial Intelligence (AI),” California Management Review, 61 (4), 43–65
3- Longoni, C., & Cian, L. (2022). Artificial intelligence in utilitarian vs. hedonic contexts: The “word-of-machine” effect. Journal of Marketing, 86(1), 91–108.
4- Rust, Roland T. and Ming-Hui Huang (2021), The Feeling Economy: How Artificial Intelligence Is Creating the Era of Empathy. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.
