Amit Segal, the senior political commentator for News 12, this morning (Friday) in his weekly column on Yedioth Shaykhin, addresses a task that all Israeli governments have failed at: the entry of the ultra-Orthodox sector into the labor market.
""An old Bazooka joke, dating back to the days before the Internet, asked what the opposite of artificial intelligence was and the answer was: natural stupidity," Segal begins his column. "This week, while avoiding a speech in the Knesset for the umpteenth time on legal reform, Netanyahu sang the praises of the technology that will change the world. His goal is to place Israel among the top five in the world, as happened a decade ago in cyberspace.".
""The key, as always, is the military: In the high-tech industry, the giant Unit 8200 is defined as 'a very good university in international terms,' and the teaching material there is gradually changing. Just as the graduates of the Levy Project launched the local high-tech industry and just as the graduates of the Intelligence Corps are responsible for the major exits, the Military Intelligence Service is also supposed to be leading the way in artificial intelligence.".
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Segal notes that thanks to this technology, the State of Israel is able to deal with many security problems. "The technology, which at first seemed like a pleasant pastime of chatting about life with a search engine, played a crucial role in the elimination of the three senior Islamic Jihad leaders. In the old intelligence world, a terrorist organization had secrets, and they could be extracted through agents on the ground, your patriots or their traitors. Then came SIGINT, which made it possible to eavesdrop and collect information remotely. The next stage is intelligence that is based on masses of open information. For example, it analyzes millions of pieces of information about the Gaza Strip and makes it possible to understand which places could be used as safe houses. It was a faceless, impartial and powerful tool that helped send the three at the same time to a world where everything was good.".
On the other hand, Segal believes that despite technological success, the State of Israel has not yet found a solution to the problem of integrating Haredi society into the labor market.
""One of the most pressing problems for Israeli society is the integration of the ultra-Orthodox into the labor market. The Netanyahu government, like other governments, has failed in this task. Unlike other governments, devoid of ultra-Orthodox, the current one is accused of encouraging non-work through youth allowances and increasing budgets for institutions without core studies, not to mention the draft exemption law.".
According to him, the current government will not be able to meet the challenge. "The Finance Minister is pinning his hopes on lowering the exemption age to 22, which will send the Haredim to work and from there, by reverse engineering, also to the army and the core. Netanyahu is pinning his hopes on free online core studies for all Israeli citizens. Math and English online, without forcing the institutions to change. Courses at the matriculation level will be offered for free, including on the kosher internet.".
However, according to Segal, the problem of bringing the ultra-Orthodox into the labor market will be dwarfed by the global problem of removing most of humanity from the workforce. "The acute Israeli problem of bringing the ultra-Orthodox into the workforce may yet be dwarfed by the enormous global problem of removing most of humanity from the workforce. A team of 300 experts recently submitted a document to the country's top decision-makers. It predicts that within a much shorter period than is commonly thought, less than a decade, the work of almost all accountants, some doctors and most lawyers will be almost completely redundant.
""Who knows, maybe in 2037 there will be only a handful of elderly human lawyers left in the entire world, in room 315 of the Jerusalem District Court, continuing to fight over more disclosure of documents in the thousands of cases.".
