
Destruction of large numbers of jobs by robots unlikely, says new OECD Study - Robotenomics
https://robotenomics.com/2016/05/18/robots-and-job-fears-new-oecd-study-says-automation-and-digitalisation-are-unlikely-to-destroy-large-numbers-of-jobs/
======
Animats
Actual OECD study: [1]

The study says that, for the US, 9% of people are at "high risk" of automated
out of a job. (That probably means "replaceable right now".) But 38% of people
are potentially replaceable.

There's an assumption in the OECD report that the entire job of a human must
be replaced. But that's not how automation works. We're seeing this in the
more advanced law firms. What used to take a senior attorney, a few junior
attorneys, a large number of paralegals, and a big clerical staff can now be
done by one attorney, one paralegal, and a lot of software and databases. The
OECD study claims that the risk to people with high levels of education is
almost nil. Ask any newly graduated lawyer trying to get a job.

That's the fundamental flaw in this study - it assumes one for one
replacement. What really happens is that the workflow is restructured so that
fewer people and more hardware are involved.

[1] [http://www.oecd-
ilibrary.org/docserver/download/5jlz9h56dvq7...](http://www.oecd-
ilibrary.org/docserver/download/5jlz9h56dvq7.pdf?expires=1463684508&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=CC0BCD3C31853DF648C3DBEBC1258E1E)

~~~
Bartweiss
One for one replacement is a truly strange standard to hold to. After all,
even trucking automation will not be a 100% loss - if nothing else, we'll see
a rise in full-service highway gas stations to fuel driverless trucks.

On the other hand, even 10% replacement of an industry (9 workers doing what
10 workers do now) is a big deal, and there are a lot of careers (legal, HR,
document handling) that should expect to see values like 75% replacement. I
can't think why someone would (in good faith) treat a one-to-one statistic as
the whole of the answer here.

~~~
arcticfox
If driverless trucking takes off, why would the gas station need to be full
service (staffed with humans)?

Compared to building an autonomous truck, autonomous refueling seems like the
easy part.

~~~
justanotherbody
By this logic should we have autonomous refueling already?

After factoring in the cost of the robotics I suspect paying humans minimum
wage is quite a bit cheaper. Especially given the diverse outdoor environments
such a system would need to be maintained in

~~~
Animats
_By this logic should we have autonomous refueling already?_

It's been done a few times.[1][2] The systems are rather slow and clunky, but
work. Dealing with all the variation between cars runs up the cost.

Tesla has a charging robot.[3] This is much easier, since Tesla controls both
sides of the interface. The car actively cooperates, opening the charging port
door. Tesla also interlocks the car so that you can't drive away while plugged
in. I'm surprised that Tesla hasn't deployed those robot chargers yet.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y_J7fg03fA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y_J7fg03fA)
[2] [http://mashable.com/2014/01/29/robotic-gas-
pump/#hDxoRZBZ5Zq...](http://mashable.com/2014/01/29/robotic-gas-
pump/#hDxoRZBZ5Zqu) [3]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMM0lRfX6YI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMM0lRfX6YI)

~~~
icebraining
They did deploy one station, between SF and LA. They say it has barely got any
traffic, so they aren't planning to build any more. Others have pointed out
that building the station was a requirement to get some CA tax benefit.

------
InclinedPlane
Sigh. It doesn't matter. People have this bizarre conception of the economy as
an exact lock-fit between jobs and work that needs doing, and they have a hard
time imagining changes to that fit, even though throughout human history there
has been constant change.

In truth there is a nearly infinite amount of work that needs doing. We just
get by with most of the work not being done. Just go back in time and think
about all the work that wasn't being done before various jobs existed. There
used to be a time before the video games industry existed, there was a time
before the movie industry existed, there was a time before people could
support themselves as authors or journalists or watch-makers.

Are we going to live in some sort of world where there's a pool of unused
labor and people just sit around thinking "whelp, it's a shame there's
literally nothing, no possible thing, for them to do, oh well"? Of course not,
that's a fantasy that's based on a complete misperception of economics. No
matter how much we automate there will always be work for people to do. The
more important question is how equitably they'll be compensated for that work
and whether or not our education system is adequate for the world as it
exists.

~~~
amatic
That is all true. Still, try pointing that out to truck drivers (for example)
when they start getting laid off because the company can't handle the
automated competition. Economy-wide, there will always be jobs for people to
do, it is the large number of individual workers who will be scared for their
particular jobs.

~~~
InclinedPlane
This is true, and very important. Volatility in jobs can potentially put those
at the bottom at an increased disadvantage, while consolidating the advantages
of those who are already well off. Partly this is because people are "falling
down" the experience ladder when starting a new career and their lack of
economic buffer means they also can't negotiate decent wages. And too, new
industries means that the hard won organizations (like labor unions) and
established norms in pay and working conditions are no longer present, putting
folks at another disadvantage.

Which has almost certainly been a factor in what's been happening to labor
since the 1980s, who have seen their wages remain stagnant and job security
fall through the floor (especially for those under 30) while the economy and
productivity continues to grow and grow. This is, I would say, fairly
obviously a bad thing, and requires a lot of rethink in order to makeup for
the extreme power imbalances and iniquities at play, but very little of
substance has been done about it so far.

------
daveguy
Hm. The subtitle is "Destruction of large numbers of jobs unlikely, says new
OECD Study", but the very first table gives a list of percent of jobs
automatable by country. It ranges from 7-12%. That is a HELL of a lot of jobs.
The argument is, "have no fear! it won't be 47% of jobs automated!" \-- only
10%. 10% job loss is a labor crisis. Of course if you have all of those
retrainable as other jobs (including automation supervisor) then maybe it
won't be too bad, but that seems pretty unlikely and this article doesn't
exactly quell concerns.

~~~
rhino369
Something like 70% of Americans worked in agriculture in 1850, and like 5% did
in 1950 (many of whom were probably migrant workers from Mexico).

We've gone through radical change before.

~~~
pasquinelli
how it goes down is important though. if automation follows after labor begins
to move to something else then that's one thing, but the reverse, automation
putting people out of work, mean there might not be anything for them to
realistically move to.

~~~
zaroth
A booming business in automation and robot repair.

~~~
adrianN
Good luck learning to program or repair self-driving trucks when you've been a
truck driver for your whole career.

~~~
Freebo
Self-driving trucks have mechanical parts too. Even if you automate basic
mechanical maintenance, operation and supervision will still require human
intervention for a relatively long time.

------
BJBBB
"However, low qualified workers are likely to bear the brunt of the adjustment
costs as the automatibility of their jobs is higher compared to highly
qualified workers. Therefore, the likely challenge for the future lies in
coping with rising inequality and ensuring sufficient (re-)training especially
for low qualified workers."

Would seem that the 'low qualified' worker is the prevailing demographic. So
that alone should make the risk, as an overall percentage, much higher than
10.

FWIW, my employer has been targeting all levels of workers for past several
years. HR is gone, warehouse people down 65%, engineering down 40%, logistics
down 30%, production down 35%. Mostly through process automation, some through
robotics, and some through out-sourcing. And there has been a careful and
selective 'firing' of customers. Both Net and Gross have significantly
increased for three years. As for me, just sit here and write the code to do
some of this. Am I evil?

------
sandworm101
Honestly, I read these studies and think nobody writing them has any idea of
what these jobs actually entail. Driving a truck is not the be all and end all
of being a truck driver. The driver covers a great many tasks, from admin and
security, to safety inspections, to dealing with law enforcement and boarder
guards. I see no talk of how the robot is to replace those functions.

I do see sweeping statements about rebuilding entire infrastructures in order
to accommodate robots (ie doing away with roadside safety inspections or
eliminating boarder crossings). Every day I see ships come into harbour.
Creating an autopilot for a ship is simple compared to one for a trucks. Yet
every day a speedboat heads out to deliver the harbour pilot, and tugboat
captains stand guard as tankers approach the bridge. Automation has failed to
remove any of those jobs. The engine room crews may be a little smaller than
in days past but the bridge crews, the drivers, are still there. We wouldn't
have it any other way.

And aircraft ... and trains ...

~~~
orkoden
You could have truck drivers just at the start and end points of a route.
Trucking companies can have representatives at the border, who then guide it
through customs. No need to sit in the vehicle for hours.

~~~
sandworm101
Again, it isn't the physical act of driving that matters. It's that the truck
driver is vetting the cargo. He is responsible for the contents, he is going
to jail if there is something illegal in his truck. Someone jumping in the cab
just shy of the boarder isn't going to be of much use to a boarder guard
asking questions.

------
ChuckMcM
The actual study is a bit more detailed and it suggests some interesting
things.

One is the evolution of work and jobs over time. As a pretty relevant example,
the migration of shopping to "online" vs in store means two things; First you
don't need the goods in a metro area, and second you need to get them to the
customers. If you replace all current "shopping" traffic with "delivery"
traffic it really cuts into the buyer's experience (waiting for delivery) but
drone delivery allows the delivery component to scale. Of course drone
delivery has to be reasonably local, but needn't be closer than a 10 miles or
so, that means a "town" outside of the city that is well served by cargo
container delivery can then provide the point where bulk delivery switches to
individual delivery. That implies a economies with the movement of containers
above and beyond the current system of trains and trucks. Either additional
rail networks or lots more trucks. If those trucks are automatable, well that
helps as well.

So if we imagine some "delivery only" roads where only robotic trucks are
allowed, that lead to warehouses where end product dispersal is done, to
smaller warehouses where local delivery can be queued/expedited. Walk that
backwards to figure out the things you need in order to deploy that.

At which point it would be interesting to evaluate the energy efficiency of
that system over the current one to make sure what you get back in efficiency
by automation you don't spend on additional energy.

~~~
orkoden
> we imagine some "delivery only" roads

This is possible but unlikely. There have been numerous plans in the past to
build such large infrastructure. Like large pneumatic tubes to every house for
deliveries. It usually turned out to be too expensive to build.

~~~
ChuckMcM
The trick though is to understand the economics of what you're trying to do
before you implement it. Additional rail lines are quite expensive, one lane
roads not so much.

Starting small, consider an autonomous truck that uses electricity like a city
bus to move a container along a single lane protected from other traffic. You
have one end in the port of Oakland (busy container terminal) and the other in
a distribution warehouse outside Livermore (lots of open space, access to
freeways and rail). Now one has to price out the cost savings of having
containers appear automatically in a transhipping location without burning
diesel or getting stuck in traffic.

You save a bit on the driver, you save more on the gas, and you take roads off
the freeway which will help you to encourage local municipalities to give you
easements for your autobot trucks to drive on.

It would be fun to sit down with a trans-shipper and find out their costs and
whether or not you could save them time and effort.

------
loup-vaillant
Their conclusion doesn't follow from their numbers.

> _Overall, we find that, on average across the 21 OECD countries, 9 % of jobs
> are automatable._

As in, right freaking _now_? Blimey, what about the next few decades, then?
Not to mention that 9% is already a big number.

That being said, the more automation the better. We just need something better
than punishing the jobless with poverty.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
That is the concern. AI and robotics keep evolving, perhaps at an exponential
rate, and therefore more and more jobs will be slated for automation.

The study should be thought of as valid only short-term.

------
blobbers
OECD deemed wrong. Replaced by robots.

------
cm2187
We have seen exactly the same fear with the appearance of machines and
automation in the industry after the war. Look at historical news footage and
people were concerned that this would lead to massive losses of jobs. And it
did, the industry is a lot less labour intensive today, at least in the
western world. But jobs were created elsewhere and the economy adapted.

Beside, with outsourcing to China, there aren't that many manufacturing jobs
left in the US and Europe for robots to take anyway. I think where robots will
have a huge potential is for domestic tasks: cleaning your home, taking
parcels while you're away, preparing food, doing the laundry and ironing. A
home robot that would do all that would have a huge market. But they are not
going to replace an existing workforce, rather free up time for women (who
still predominantly bear the burden of these tasks) and enable them to focus
on their career.

I think there could be another wave of automation in the service industry, but
it wouldn't be robots, just software. Today there are a huge number of manual
tasks done in the service industry: processing invoices, preparing financial
accounts, payslips, paying a lawyer to rewrite the same contract over and
over, etc. Some of that can be automated by outsourcing it to a provider who
has the means to automate it, but a huge fraction is just too specific,
customized to a business, to justify paying for an IT team to build software
for it. The way to automate it is for business people to build their own
automation. In a way Microsoft Office has done partially that (an accountant
with Excel has the productivity of 50 accountants from the 50s) but I think we
can gain another order of magnitude of productivity by enable people to code.
For that, basic coding skills should be widely deployed, in a very simple and
highly productive language. And I am not convinced this language already
exists.

------
stevetrewick
Nitpick :

> _OECD Working Papers should not be reported as representing the official
> views of the OECD or of its member countries._

And yet they always are.

Numbers wise, even if Frey and Osborne's supposedly apocalyptic numbers are
correct that's 47% job destruction over 20+ years, or roughly 2.35% per annum.
Since we already destroy between 10% and 15% [0] of jobs annually (depending
on where you are and who's doing the measuring) this really doesn't represent
that big a shift. Given some of this is likely due to automation anyway, the
lower figures given in this paper would barely register.

[0]
[http://econweb.umd.edu/~haltiwan/c12451.pdf](http://econweb.umd.edu/~haltiwan/c12451.pdf)

------
Freebo
A model of human work:

\- The number of people occupied per industry is inversely proportional to the
number of industries in existence.

\- The barrier to entry is also inversely proportional to the number of
industries in existence.

The process for every new industry generally goes something like this:

\- Stage 1: mostly makers (100%)

\- Stage 2: some makers (25%) + some operators of some tech that raises
general efficiency (25%) (50% slowly moves to some new industry)

\- Stage 3: few makers (5%) + some operators (10%) + some supervisors of some
autonomous tech that maximizes efficiency (10%) (25% slowly moves to some new
industry)

Was this process historically painless and ultra efficient? No! Did it do the
job again and again with some acceptable level of efficiency? Yes!

The argument that this time is different this will stop working is getting
stronger and stronger.

I personally think that is not the case. With some pain that require good
policy, up and downs and so on this is the way we operate, we adapt.

Take prostitution (the oldest job in the world!), the next thing is robots
yes, but also cam girls. Lower barrier to entry and maybe even bigger industry
with lots of specialization.

And next thing for cam girls? Is of course virtual cam girls but also avatar
builders/modelers/players even lower barrier to entry and potentially bigger
industry and so on.

------
Zigurd
Let's see if a deep learning system outperforms OECD economists on this
question.

~~~
marcosdumay
Judging by the number of times I saw OECD economists getting any prediction
right, I'd say a two headed coin will at a minimum even them.

------
unabst
We should also be asking, who owns the robots? If companies like Foxconn go
robo-conn and move to 70% automation [0], that's not only a million people
being fired, it's a business owning an automated labor force that doesn't
employ people, yet produces goods. If we can calculate how much labor these
robots do compared to humans, one solutions would be for the government to tax
the fuck out of robots to protect jobs and to compensate for rising social
service costs (assuming the paranoia over job growth has merit). Of course,
that's also what they could have done to counter the market dumping by
overseas outsourcing, but they didn't give a fuck. Much automation has also
happened in US factories a while ago with bottling and food and high-tech. To
the government's credit though, we survived.

\---

[0] [http://www.computerworld.com/article/2941272/emerging-
techno...](http://www.computerworld.com/article/2941272/emerging-
technology/foxconns-ceo-backpedals-on-robot-takeover-at-factories.html)

------
11thEarlOfMar
The most imminent threat to jobs that I can identify is drivers. Taxi's,
trucks, delivery vehicles and buses.

We can see rapid improvement of self-driving technology. For sure, tech moves
into mainstream more slowly than we generally imagine it will, but the sheer
numbers of persons who could be displaced make even a relatively protracted
implementation a big problem. Drive through Mountain View, Ca. on any given
day and you'll see multiple Google autonomous vehicles. Uber, Apple, Tesla,
GM, Volvo, .. most major auto companies, some minor companies and even non-
auto companies are working on it with a high level of focus.

Two aspects of this movement may inhibit widespread deployment and slow the
rate of robotic vehicles subsuming human jobs:

\- The pace of legislation and the attending regulatory infrastructure.
Governments are cooperating for the most part, likely attracted by the
prospect of safer transportation in general. So I think this will not
materially delay the roll out.

\- The dilution of talent as these efforts compete for technologists may slow
the progress of all of them, unless individual engineering leaders can attract
and retain the top people.

The numbers look like this (2014), [1], [2], [3], [4]:

233,700 Taxi

665,000 Bus

1,797,700 Semi/Tractor-Trailer

1,330,000 Delivery

In 2014, that was roughly 4 million people who make a living driving. And the
2 most valuable companies in the world, Google and Apple, are working very
hard to put these drivers out of work. What makes it particularly difficult is
that these workers are typically uneducated and will have no place to go
except minimum wage service jobs. Moreover, many former manufacturing workers
took these driving jobs as a downgrade to income. And it looks like they have
another target on their back.

Where do they go from here? Speaking for myself, I think the country has a
moral obligation to make some accommodation and not just wave our hands a bit
and say 'oh, they'll be fine'.

[1] [http://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-
moving/ta...](http://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-moving/taxi-
drivers-and-chauffeurs.htm)

[2] [http://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-
moving/bu...](http://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-moving/bus-
drivers.htm)

[3] [http://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-
moving/he...](http://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-moving/heavy-
and-tractor-trailer-truck-drivers.htm)

[4] [http://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-
moving/de...](http://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-
moving/delivery-truck-drivers-and-driver-sales-workers.htm)

~~~
apendleton
Moving people and things is way bigger than just vehicles on public roads,
too. There are giant earth-movers in pit mines, metro trains, and other fairly
car-like examples. There are also less obvious examples like the increasing
automation of Amazon warehouses: where once pickers moved amongst the shelves
in a warehouse, now pickers are stationary and robots move entire banks of
shelves around, entirely automated, and the same amount of picking and packing
is done with fewer pickers.

These are all facets of the same problem, and it's _everywhere._

------
thinkr42
Find it entertaining that a GLM is the best method to detect whether a job or
job class is at risk.

~~~
sitkack
GLM (global free market) having not read the article ... but the risk of job
loss to automation is even more dire in those GLM labor countries. We have
already seen jobs migrate from US -> China -> Vietnam -> Sudan. And each step
the level of automation increases. Everything that happens in Japan will
happen to the rest of the world at some point. Japan is the Canary.

The world has already passed peak job. Our task as programmer has always been
to automate everything, including ourselves.

Someone will soon build a totally modular, reconfigurable intelligent factory.
An autofac, power and raw materials go in and anything and everything comes
out the other side. For large classes of goods, this is an engineering
problem, not a science problem.

------
Reedx
Tell that to horses?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU)

------
kuzmin
Nobody has commented on that Russia only has 2% of jobs that they see are
easily automated. That feels utterly ridiculous

------
Pica_soO
OECD Study recreating easy says Neural Network

------
eli_gottlieb
I'm just going to have to build better robots then, aren't I?

------
imaginenore
I'd say it's inevitable. The actual important question is when.

~~~
ionwake
5 years?

~~~
Pica_soO
So it will happen around AI beating humans at go?

(Prediction^HopeItWontHappenToMe) * Scottyfactor = Real Timeframe

~~~
Florin_Andrei
Which happened earlier this year.

------
blazespin
9% is a lot. Globalization is the biggest problem though. Also, I think, is
the realization that consumption is destroying the planet. This leads to
higher consumption taxes (thank god) and more bartering via things like
craigslist.

------
StanislavPetrov
This piece is utter trash founded on baseless assumptions.

>Arntz, et al. argue that the estimated share of “jobs at risk” _must not be
equated with actual or expected employment losses_ from technological advances
for three reasons.

So in other words, the title is false. Actual employment loss is what is at
issue here.

>The utilisation of new technologies is a slow process, due to economic, legal
and societal hurdles, so that technological substitution often does not take
place as expected.

The first ridiculous assertion. Jobs wont be destroyed because it will take a
long time to destroy them!

>Even if new technologies are introduced, workers can adjust to changing
technological endowments by switching tasks, thus preventing technological
unemployment.

Asinine assertion #2. People will just get new jobs when robots take their
jobs! (of course what new jobs will be available is left unsaid).

>Technological change also generates additional jobs through demand for new
technologies and through higher competitiveness.

Asinine assertion #3, virtually the same as #2. What new jobs will be created
by the automated vehicles that put tens of millions of drivers out of work?

This article reads very much like the tripe offered by those who continue to
argue that NAFTA and related "free trade deals" are actually good for workers.

~~~
snowwrestler
The hard question is not whether certain jobs will get automated out of
existence--they will.

The hard question is why that automation will not result in the creation of
new industries, which themselves will create new jobs. This has happened
throughout human history. To say that won't happen anymore is a high bar.

That's why the pace of change does matter. If jobs are destroyed much faster
than they are created, then there might be social unrest in the lag.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
There's only so many times you can retrain a human. Plus, the "re-
trainability" rate decreases dramatically with age.

In a decade or two there will be a heck of a lot of middle-age people
hopelessly outpaced by the rate of change. 10 years after that, even young
people won't be able to keep up.

~~~
jrapdx3
While there are age-related declines in certain cognitive abilities, in the
absence of conditions like neuro-degenerative disease, it doesn't mean that
older individuals are _incapable_ of learning new tasks and skills.

Differences among age groups are greatest comparing people in their 20's vs.
60's (or beyond). Even then, differences are modest.

See this article for more explanation: Clark R, Freedberg M, Hazeltine E, Voss
MW. _" Are There Age-Related Differences in the Ability to Learn Configural
Responses?"_
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26317773](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26317773)

There's also evidence of alterations in "learning style" with age but that's
yet another consideration.

