

Will Robots Steal Your Job? - tokenadult
http://www.slate.com/id/2304442/

======
mtgentry
For those of you who have your doubts, this is the bottom line for me:
Corporate America is raking in the cash even though the economy is lousy. They
don't NEED to hire new workers. They're doing fine without them, that's the
thing no one in DC will talk about.

Small businesses will rescue the country you say? I'm not so sure. I own a
reusable water bottle company. All of my warehousing and shipping needs are
done by a fulfillment house (which does the same thing for other small
businesses). Our shipping and warehousing needs are shared. And most of my
marketing can be done through MailChimp,Twitter etc.

I don't need to hire any workers either.

Worse still, let's say my competition has 5-10 employees. All things being
equal, I can undercut them ruthlessly if I wanted to because I have lower
overhead.

I think an easy way to keep tabs on all of this is to simply look at
unemployment. If it stays around 10% for another few years, it seems like we
have a STRUCTURAL unemployment problem on our hands. And one of the causes is
surely automation.

~~~
WalterBright
>And one of the causes is surely automation.

People have been saying that since the first mechanised loom machines appeared
200 years ago.

~~~
bermanoid
And they were just as right back then as they are now about the fundamental
problem: fewer and fewer humans, over time, have anything of value to
contribute to the economy. Come strong AI, and that number will rapidly drop
to zero, and even the people that specialize in AI will quickly become useless
in comparison to their creations...

People may disagree about exactly when that will happen, but 20 years is
probably a good inside guess computationally speaking, and anything much past
40 would mean that we really dropped the ball on AI software research (which
is definitely possible, to be fair), so I'm not really so hot on the idea of
writing off these concerns as overly premature or ill conceived. People were
way off 200 years ago, but these days the literal end of human usefulness is
visible on a very real horizon, possibly within our lifetimes.

------
ryandvm
I hope so. The decades between when the robots start doing all our jobs and
when they rise up against us are going to be easy street.

------
jjmaxwell4
PG brought the most important defense against this argument the last time an
article like this got posted. Why this time? Technology, including automation,
has been around for the past 60 years, but we have only gotten richer.

When the declaration of independence was signed, it took 19 out of every 20
people to feed America and provide and surplus for export. Today it takes 1
out of every 20 people to do the same thing. Did jobs disappear? Did we have
unemployment at 10%? No. People adapted, and got jobs doing things that were
useful and beneficial to the economy.

Robots will take revolutionize many industries, just like software is right
now, but it won't mean the demise of the economy. In fact it will be a huge
boon, and we will continue to advance as we have been for the past 500 years.
By nearly any measure possible, we are better off today then 50 years ago.
Technology is no small part of that.

~~~
astrofinch
"Why this time?" Why not this time? Arguing from historical trends is a weak
form of argument, especially when we are discussing something as complicated
as the human economy (humans are complicated enough, it's hard to say much for
certain about their economy).

Anyway there's data suggesting this transformation is already happening:

[http://www.bing.com/search?q=median+wages+adjusted+for+infla...](http://www.bing.com/search?q=median+wages+adjusted+for+inflation)

I'm tentatively in favor of this change – I don't see how having efficient,
intelligent, cheap means of production can hurt human civilization in the long
run, so long as we can work out resource allocation challenges.

~~~
jjmaxwell4
>arguing from historical trends is a weak form of argument.

Not really, since this exact argument was previously made in the 1800's by
textile workers. We can learn from that for sure. Humans are very complicated,
but it is reasonable to say that we are fundamentally not much more
complicated then we were in 1800.

~~~
astrofinch
It's true that in the 1800s, other jobs appeared for displaced textile
workers. It's not obvious that the conditions that caused those jobs to appear
will persist indefinitely.

Historical trends continue except when they don't. Housing prices are a great
example.

------
troymc
Some fiction exploring this idea (and more):

* Manna, by Marshall Brain, <http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm>

* Accelerando, by Charles Stross (goes way farther than Slate.com will ever go), <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando_%28novel%29> \--- note that you can download the full text for free (licensed CC-BY-NC-ND).

------
jleyank
Not until they figure out how robots can program. As we're not sure WE know
how to program (or program correctly), it looks to be a meta-problem right
now. Or, has there been AI advances that the blogs haven't talked about.

Others have pointed out that foreign workers are cheaper than robots. Perhaps
this will change when oil prices go through the roof, but for now biologicals
are the preferred choice.

~~~
ebiester
We're still fine. We're probably fine for the next twenty or fifty years.

Manufacturing jobs are not fine, and they haven't been fine for a while.
That's not just China -- the manufacturing that is done in this country (and
Germany, and China) has become increasingly automated.

They're working on Agriculture, and as computer vision improves (as it's doing
now) the agricultural jobs are going to fall through the floor. First, it will
be robots that pick the easiest fruit, and humans finish the job. Then, the
robots will get better and better, and eventually the humans will be too
expensive to get the remnants.

The hidden piece to the law puzzle is that lawyers are becoming increasingly
efficient.

Why do we need pharmacy techs anymore? Just design the pharmacy to auto-
dispense the drugs, and have the pharmacist there to answer questions and give
the directions.

As it is, technology is reducing the number of people who work in grocery
stores. I'm sure that Walmart will figure out a way to automate stocking in
the next ten years.

How close are we to machine learning and Radiology? Someone has to be working
on a "See chart. See expert radiologist opinion. Give computer percentage and
expert recommendation side by side. Put results afterward into computer to
help train machine." workflow? How long, after that, is the machine learning
better than the radiologist, who concentrates on a smaller and smaller number
of hard cases?

How long after that, is a robot woodworker better than a human one? The
robotic one can choose to leave human-like imperfections or not.

Now, which of these seem unlikely, given what we know about machine learning
and computer vision algorithms? It's not that the problem is hard as much as
the computing power/$ isn't there.

Yet.

~~~
kiba
Question: how will the unemployed find the money to purchase said good
dispensed by machines?

Machines need markets to sustain their existence or else their owners abandon
them or turn them into scrap parts.

~~~
jerf
How do they do it now?

Because, after all, the robot job holocaust isn't in the future; it's in the
_past_. As someone else pointed out, in the past, even the relatively _recent_
past, the vast bulk of humanity was directly involved in growing food. Now
those jobs are gone. So what happened?

Other jobs, including types of jobs never imagined before.

Capital producers, such as programmers, those still involved in mining, etc.
aren't going to want to just sit there and hoard their programs, iron, food,
etc., and they will find some way to spend it on other goods and services that
the robots can't do, or that humans simply won't accept robots doing. The
future has a lot more artists in it, I think.

The unemployed will make money when you decide that there is something in your
life that you want, be it art, services, or even just robot wrangling itself,
and you want that good or service enough that somebody is willing to provide
it for you for a price you'll take. Not you in the abstract, _you_. If you get
desperate enough you may well be willing to pay them to learn how to do this
thing you want, or at least subsidize their way through it. Things may change
a lot, but the fundamental forces of economics don't break down until this set
dwindles to zero (presumably because you can just instantiate an AI to do what
you want), at which point all bets are off anyhow, and the poor will probably
still be mind-blowingly rich by our standards at that point.

Now, that's not to say everything's hunky dory. There is some legitimate
concern about the rate of job elimination exceeding the rate at which people
can retrain into other skills. I'm pointing this out though to make the
observation that we have over a hundred years of historical answer to your
question, a continuous cycle of destruction of industry after industry, yet
barring a fundamentally finance-and-stupid-policy crisis that we happen to be
in now, we're still looking at single-digit unemployment with people working
~40 hours a week, numbers that are very stable across decades (at least in
comparison to the horrible pictures people paint of this scenario). It's
interesting to discuss what's _different_ about this innovation surge, but
"Who will buy the Model Ts?" ceased to be an interesting question decades ago.

(And personally, while the topic may be in the air, it hasn't happened yet. I
don't think this unemployment spike has anything to do with robotics. The
business cycle suffices to explain it. I don't expect the next wave of
roboticization to really start impacting the job market for a good 5 or 10
years minimum. There's still a lot of pieces to put together.)

~~~
ebiester
That tends to be my intuition as well.

In the long term, things look really good. In the short term, it's looking
like a lot of pain.

The complication is the resource crunch, particularly in rare metals and
water.

------
ajuc
There are already systems for handling routine court cases (mostly all about
"letters before debt recover action" and managing when these payments are
due).

One in my city - in 2011 it handled almost 1000000 cases already (it employs
102 "judging" persons - 4 judges and 98 "junior judges"). So it is
1000000/(270*102)=36 cases per day per person (not counting free days). Human
input is very limited in such systems, and throughput is huge - freeing humans
to do more creative work. I can only imagine it getting more automatic every
year and handling greater varety of cases.

Article about it (in Polish - sorry) -
[http://wiadomosci.gazeta.pl/Wiadomosci/1,80273,10326080,Jedy...](http://wiadomosci.gazeta.pl/Wiadomosci/1,80273,10326080,Jedyny_w_Polsce_e_sad_tonie__Jeszcze_nie_bylo_tak.html)

I believe AI will be stealing our jobs long before robots will be stealing
jobs of cleaners or builders. That's because we are much better at scaling
software than hardware. Write program once and it can handle any amount of
information given enough processor time. And processor time is commodity now.

And special purpose AI is getting better all the time.

------
zeteo
> robotic lawyers will bring cheap legal services to the masses who can't
> afford lawyers today.

Just what in the world is a robotic lawyer good for?! It's hard to imagine a
profession in which a weird corporeal presence might actually be less useful.
Yes, databases and expert systems are taking up a lot of the work that fresh
law school graduates were doing a few decades ago. So the poor humans these
days need to spend more time with badly paid and unexciting activities, like
confronting hostile witnesses and persuading juries...

~~~
ajuc
Already happening - for now in the small niches - like systems that allow lay
man to search law (less demand for lawyers), or systems that handle routine
cases leaving judges only checking documents and signing them (see my previous
comment).

There won't be a C3PO walking awkwardly into court room, but some day most of
the cases will be handled in the software, leaving controversial matters and
appelations to humans.

------
natmaster
These luddites completely understand the situation. Software will simply
replace the menial parts of jobs, leaving only the more interesting parts left
to humans. In other words, you'll be able to do more with what you have, and
you won't be bored out of your mind doing repetitive tasks.

In math: The Boyer-Moore theorem solver. This completely replaces a
mathematicians job of proving theorems, right? Wrong. It replaces the menial
task of connecting the steps, and making sure the proof is correct.
Mathematicians can now focus on the bigger picture, more complicated proofs,
instead of wasting time verifying the correctness of their proof.

In law: I'm not familiar with the exact system name, but there are systems
that make retrieving huge legal databases to find relevant cases much much
easier. This replaces the menial legal-aide jobs, but not the creative aspect
of figuring out how to tie past cases together, present your case in court,
etc. (I'm not super familiar with a lawyer's job, but you get the point.)

In art: Photoshop makes effects take much less work.

I could go on all day. Technology is what creates growth, and those who refuse
to learn the new technology deserve to be left behind.

~~~
avdempsey
"Technology is what creates growth, and those who refuse to learn the new
technology deserve to be left behind."

You might be right, but it doesn't matter what people deserve. Unfortunately,
you may find that those that are left behind will cause untenable social
unrest. If job automation outpaces re-training by too great a rate you can
kiss civil society goodbye. No one can hold automation back, but we can work
to smooth out the anticipated pain. No matter how optimistic you are about
growth, we need this spaceship to hold together!

------
mildweed
At some point, when all the means of production and deduction are automated,
capitalism will likely collapse. My input to society as an individual will
come from my human qualities, not from my labor or reasoning qualities. Star
Trek TNG's society seems more prophetic every day.

------
ck2
To further the irony, the robots won't even be made in your country but a
design outsourced overseas.

In about a decade only fundamental services that cannot be automated will be
left.

------
ChrisNorstrom
I find this ASTRONOMICALLY interesting! I wonder what will happen to us...

In the past, JOBS were a way to redistribute money and keep the money cycle
flowing. The rich who owned companies are rich because the average consumer
pays for their products and services. The rich then hire workers and pass
money down to them, as well as spend money on other products made by other
workers. But as unemployment reaches 20% then 30% then 40% over the next
50-100 years. We'll have to readjust the way we redistribute money in order to
keep the money cycle going. Otherwise the rich will get richer and the poor
will get poorer, to a point, then the whole system will collapse because who
will have the money to buy your products. If the middle and lower class don't
have any money to spend on the products that the company using robots makes...
Product creators will effective kill off their own wealth machine.

Decades ago 80%+ of everything we bought was made in our own country, now that
number has dwindled down to, 20% was it? It was some terrible small number.
Outsourcing to China was good in the short term (cheaper more affordable
products) and terribly destructive in the long term (disrupting the money
cycle and destroying jobs). Now everyone in the US is pissed off about
unemployment, we're passing all sorts of job bills and stimuliouses, while
we're all ignoring the giant elephant in the room. We pissed our jobs away in
the name of cheaper products (consumers are just as guilty as shareholders).

Look at what outsourcing to China has done. Rich get richer, poor got poorer,
then the economy tanked because consumers don't have money to spend on the
products the rich make. Now imagine what automation is going to do...
Driverless buses and subways (already in testing / already in use) that don't
go on strike, robots that fix robots (almost there) and never ask for a raise.
Robot pharmacists that don't make mistakes (already in testing). Robotic
construction workers that don't join unions. The people who own these
businesses that employ robots over humans will make tremendous profits and
save lives and do a better, faster job too. But they will HAVE to redistribute
their money using a new method. Socialism? Who knows.

I'm not afraid of this future where robots take over. In fact I'm looking
forward to it. I'm just afraid of our refusal to adjust to it.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_Look at what outsourcing to China has done. Rich get richer, poor got poorer,
then the economy tanked because consumers don't have money to spend on the
products the rich make._

The poor in China have gotten considerably richer. India also.

<http://www.un.org/esa/desa/papers/2010/wp92_2010.pdf>

We've also gotten richer in the US, even while "the Chinese/Indians stole our
jobs". The only reason we believe the US has stagnated is because immigration
lowers our cross-sectional averages (but not our longitudinal averages).

[http://crazybear.posterous.com/did-immigrants-and-
simpsons-p...](http://crazybear.posterous.com/did-immigrants-and-simpsons-
paradox-cause-the)

~~~
ChrisNorstrom
Hmmm, well said. Now that I take the time to think about it. I'm wondering
what our environment, highways, air, and rivers would look like if all those
factories came to the US...

~~~
intended
I've always thought of it as a global adjustment to the levels of poverty -
maybe America is worse off, but humanity as a whole is better off.

------
hefangdotcom
I have no worries... My job is show respects to my boss.

------
georgieporgie
_In the next decade, we'll see machines barge into areas of the economy that
we'd never suspected possible—they'll be diagnosing your diseases, dispensing
your medicine, handling your lawsuits, making fundamental scientific
discoveries, and even writing stories just like this one._

That's really, really optimistic. The only one which seems plausible (and
probably a great idea in terms of eliminating human error) in the reasonably
near term is dispensing medicine. As in taking a _clearly encoded_
prescription from a verified doctor and dispensing precisely the drug
indicated. That still, though, won't eliminate the pharmacist, just a few of
the technicians.

As for diagnosing diseases, they were working on expert systems to do that
since the 70's. It has hope to be a great tool, but the doctor is still
responsible for interpreting the statements of the patient, recognizing
symptoms, and feeding the correct data into the system.

I don't see skilled knowledge workers being threatened for quite awhile. If I
were going to spread FUD about automation, I would be pointing at RedBox and
saying that it's paving the way toward automating low-end service jobs.

~~~
spc476
Odd, the results of MYCIN (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycin>) were more
accurate than doctors, and that was with 70s computer technology. And while
not as nearly entertaining to watch as House, MYCIN was probably much easier
to get along with.

~~~
georgieporgie
MYCIN diagnoses only infectious diseases, and does so only with a considerable
amount of human input. IMO that doesn't really constitute replacing people.
It's basically an interactive book of diseases combined with a statistical
analysis expert.

