It is a reasonable concern - the foundation of our economy is built around labor being rewarded with recompense which in turn is used to drive the services and consumer goods economy.
Robots don't consume services or goods - all they require is manufacturing and maintenance. What happens when your gas station needs fewer employees because everything involved in pumping and payment is automated (as many are in California). What happens when checkouts are all automated (Starting to Happen in Home Depot, Walmart, others..)
The answer, of course, is that people move up the feeding chain in employment, and are freed from such low level positions as technology improves - But, and here is the catch, as technology improves, the low-water mark may, in fact, start to rise above where people are capable of competing with technological solutions - then what happens?
Imaging a world in which Fast Food Restaurants, Grocery Stores, and Gas Stations were all 95%+ Automated. That may happen within the next 10 years. What are the new jobs for those people? What happens when Taxis, Trains, and Buses are automated (Skytrain in Vancouver, BC has had no drivers on their trains during normal circumstances for 20+ years)?
There will always (in my lifetime) be Jobs that technology won't be able to replace, but there are many, many, many jobs that are going to disappear.
The conventional wisdom says that the economy will create 50 million new jobs to absorb all the unemployed people, but that raises two important questions:
- What will those new jobs be?
They won't be in manufacturing -- robots will hold all the manufacturing jobs. They won't be in the service sector (where most new
jobs are now) -- robots will work in all the restaurants
and retail stores. They won't be in transportation --
robots will be driving everything. They won't be in
security (robotic police, robotic firefighters), the
military (robotic soldiers), entertainment (robotic
actors), medicine (robotic doctors, nurses, pharmacists,
counselors), construction (robotic construction workers),
aviation (robotic pilots, robotic air traffic controllers),
office work (robotic receptionists, call centers and
managers), research (robotic scientists), education
(robotic teachers and computer-based training), programming
or engineering (outsourced to India at one-tenth the cost),
farming (robotic agricultural machinery), etc. We are
assuming that the economy is going to invent an entirely
new category of employment that will absorb half of the
working population.
- Why isn't the economy creating those new jobs now?
Today there are millions of unemployed people. There are
also tens of millions of people who would gladly abandon
their minimum wage jobs scrubbing toilets, flipping
burgers, driving trucks and shelving inventory for
something better. This imaginary new category of employment
does not hinge on technology -- it is going to employ
people, after all, in massive numbers -- it is going to
employ half of today's working population. Why don't we see
any evidence of this new category of jobs today?
Although I think he goes a bit overboard in some cases (robotic actors?), I still find this to be rather persuasive.
Enlighten us, if you don't mind, as to which results from complexity theory indicate that these things are not possible. By my reading none of them say anything of the sort.
All the results I know of don't apply to computers any more than they do to humans, who reason no less algorithmically than computers (even if our algorithms are currently more subtle); these results tend to say that certain magic cannot be performed without invoking new classes of computation, which has absolutely no bearing on whether computers can do the type of practical research humans have been engaging in for our entire history.
"Although I think he goes a bit overboard in some cases (robotic actors?)"
Not at all overboard - there are numerous successful animated movies. Granted they still use humans to provide the voices but I find it plausible that artificial speech could be constructed.
Maybe I am overly optimistic about human intelligence, but I don't really see a "low water mark", at least in a practical sense -- certainly not anytime soon.
There will always be a "least skilled job" in the employment hierarchy. By the time our society reaches a level at which its lowest form of employment exceeds the capabilities of our current checkout clerks and fast food workers, staying alive will likely require very little in the way of monetary resources.
Jobs are a signal of needs. If all production jobs are eliminated than that is a good thing. It clearly mean the end of scarcity as we know it. Economic as we know it would largely disappear.
If that happens, we humans can just relax and enjoy life as it is. Sucking the system's resourcewhile robots produce ever more stuff for us to consume.
Jobs are not the end to itself. Rather, they are signals that tells us the demands of individuals in a world of scarce input. If robots multiply that input until it reach a level where humans cannot possibly consume all for many years, than it is a good thing.
What happens when your gas station needs fewer employees because everything involved in pumping and payment is automated (as many are in California). What happens when checkouts are all automated (Starting to Happen in Home Depot, Walmart, others..)
Have you ever been to Japan?
But, and here is the catch, as technology improves, the low-water mark may, in fact, start to rise above where people are capable of competing with technological solutions - then what happens?
Ancient Greece - lots of slaves, ancient Rome - a whole lot of slave, in fact their economy collapsed when they ran out of slaves.
The future we can look forward to is this order:
1. An economy much like modern day Japan.
2. An economy similar to ancient Greece where people busy themselves with pursuits of the mind.
3. An economy similar to ancient Rome where a whole lot of people have nothing to do and we have a vital need for bread and circuses, luckily easily taken care of by robots.
4. Machines as smart or smarter then man - Singularity!
The thing is, Japan has a relatively homogenous society and a population decline, which may better equip them to deal with social problems (although they encounter their own social difficulties, eg hikikimori, freeters etc.).
The same technological trends may play out very differently in a less diverse or younger population where competition for resources is more necessary, acute and violent. I'm struck by the fact that a lot of Americans whose careers were invested in manufacturing and who didn't have an exit or transfer strategy are now feeling unable to adapt and tend to become politically polarized as a result. Depending on their political affiliations they may place the blame on capitalism, globalism, China, illegal aliens, computers, or wherever...the underlying point being that there are a lot of people finding themselves in an economic dead end with limited future prospects, and they're very angry about it. Such people tend to be both pessimistic and confrontational.
Comments
"they said there was legitimate concern that technological progress would transform the work force by destroying a widening range of jobs"
They sound rather crazy... perhaps I am misreading the implication?
It is a reasonable concern - the foundation of our economy is built around labor being rewarded with recompense which in turn is used to drive the services and consumer goods economy.
Robots don't consume services or goods - all they require is manufacturing and maintenance. What happens when your gas station needs fewer employees because everything involved in pumping and payment is automated (as many are in California). What happens when checkouts are all automated (Starting to Happen in Home Depot, Walmart, others..)
The answer, of course, is that people move up the feeding chain in employment, and are freed from such low level positions as technology improves - But, and here is the catch, as technology improves, the low-water mark may, in fact, start to rise above where people are capable of competing with technological solutions - then what happens?
Imaging a world in which Fast Food Restaurants, Grocery Stores, and Gas Stations were all 95%+ Automated. That may happen within the next 10 years. What are the new jobs for those people? What happens when Taxis, Trains, and Buses are automated (Skytrain in Vancouver, BC has had no drivers on their trains during normal circumstances for 20+ years)?
There will always (in my lifetime) be Jobs that technology won't be able to replace, but there are many, many, many jobs that are going to disappear.
We need to consider the consequences.
Marshall Brain's "Robotic Nation" explores this in some detail:
http://www.marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm
His own view seems to be summed up as:
The conventional wisdom says that the economy will create 50 million new jobs to absorb all the unemployed people, but that raises two important questions:
They won't be in manufacturing -- robots will hold all the manufacturing jobs. They won't be in the service sector (where most new jobs are now) -- robots will work in all the restaurants and retail stores. They won't be in transportation -- robots will be driving everything. They won't be in security (robotic police, robotic firefighters), the military (robotic soldiers), entertainment (robotic actors), medicine (robotic doctors, nurses, pharmacists, counselors), construction (robotic construction workers), aviation (robotic pilots, robotic air traffic controllers), office work (robotic receptionists, call centers and managers), research (robotic scientists), education (robotic teachers and computer-based training), programming or engineering (outsourced to India at one-tenth the cost), farming (robotic agricultural machinery), etc. We are assuming that the economy is going to invent an entirely new category of employment that will absorb half of the working population. Today there are millions of unemployed people. There are also tens of millions of people who would gladly abandon their minimum wage jobs scrubbing toilets, flipping burgers, driving trucks and shelving inventory for something better. This imaginary new category of employment does not hinge on technology -- it is going to employ people, after all, in massive numbers -- it is going to employ half of today's working population. Why don't we see any evidence of this new category of jobs today?Although I think he goes a bit overboard in some cases (robotic actors?), I still find this to be rather persuasive.
I like how science can be automated but programming needs to be outsourced to India.
The results of complexity theory heavily suggest that automated science and automated engineering are impossible.
Enlighten us, if you don't mind, as to which results from complexity theory indicate that these things are not possible. By my reading none of them say anything of the sort.
All the results I know of don't apply to computers any more than they do to humans, who reason no less algorithmically than computers (even if our algorithms are currently more subtle); these results tend to say that certain magic cannot be performed without invoking new classes of computation, which has absolutely no bearing on whether computers can do the type of practical research humans have been engaging in for our entire history.
Then how do humans do it if we're Turing machines?
"Although I think he goes a bit overboard in some cases (robotic actors?)"
Not at all overboard - there are numerous successful animated movies. Granted they still use humans to provide the voices but I find it plausible that artificial speech could be constructed.
Maybe I am overly optimistic about human intelligence, but I don't really see a "low water mark", at least in a practical sense -- certainly not anytime soon.
There will always be a "least skilled job" in the employment hierarchy. By the time our society reaches a level at which its lowest form of employment exceeds the capabilities of our current checkout clerks and fast food workers, staying alive will likely require very little in the way of monetary resources.
Jobs are a signal of needs. If all production jobs are eliminated than that is a good thing. It clearly mean the end of scarcity as we know it. Economic as we know it would largely disappear.
If that happens, we humans can just relax and enjoy life as it is. Sucking the system's resourcewhile robots produce ever more stuff for us to consume.
Jobs are not the end to itself. Rather, they are signals that tells us the demands of individuals in a world of scarce input. If robots multiply that input until it reach a level where humans cannot possibly consume all for many years, than it is a good thing.
What happens when your gas station needs fewer employees because everything involved in pumping and payment is automated (as many are in California). What happens when checkouts are all automated (Starting to Happen in Home Depot, Walmart, others..)
Have you ever been to Japan?
But, and here is the catch, as technology improves, the low-water mark may, in fact, start to rise above where people are capable of competing with technological solutions - then what happens?
Ancient Greece - lots of slaves, ancient Rome - a whole lot of slave, in fact their economy collapsed when they ran out of slaves.
The future we can look forward to is this order:
1. An economy much like modern day Japan.
2. An economy similar to ancient Greece where people busy themselves with pursuits of the mind.
3. An economy similar to ancient Rome where a whole lot of people have nothing to do and we have a vital need for bread and circuses, luckily easily taken care of by robots.
4. Machines as smart or smarter then man - Singularity!
Have you ever been to Japan?
The thing is, Japan has a relatively homogenous society and a population decline, which may better equip them to deal with social problems (although they encounter their own social difficulties, eg hikikimori, freeters etc.).
The same technological trends may play out very differently in a less diverse or younger population where competition for resources is more necessary, acute and violent. I'm struck by the fact that a lot of Americans whose careers were invested in manufacturing and who didn't have an exit or transfer strategy are now feeling unable to adapt and tend to become politically polarized as a result. Depending on their political affiliations they may place the blame on capitalism, globalism, China, illegal aliens, computers, or wherever...the underlying point being that there are a lot of people finding themselves in an economic dead end with limited future prospects, and they're very angry about it. Such people tend to be both pessimistic and confrontational.
The transition is indeed going to be painful for a lot of people.