When will robots take our jobs?
A new study conducted by Pew Research has pointed to divided opinion on how advances in AI and robotics will impact the economic and employment picture over the next decade.
The report’s publishers received 1,900 responses from experts to an open-ended question about the impact of artificial intelligence and robotic on the future of employment.
The vast majority of respondents anticipate that robotics and artificial intelligence will permeate wide segments of daily life by 2025, with huge implications for a range of industries such as health care, transport and logistics, customer service, and home maintenance.
Half (48%) envision a future in which robots and digital agents have displaced significant numbers of both blue- and white-collar workers, while the rest expect that technology will not displace more jobs than it creates by 2025.
Vint Cerf, vice president and chief Internet evangelist for Google, said: “Historically, technology has created more jobs than it destroys and there is no reason to think otherwise in this case. Someone has to make and service all these advanced devices.”
Geoff Livingston, author and president of Tenacity5 Media, wrote, “I see the movement towards AI and robotics as evolutionary, in large part because it is such a sociological leap. The technology may be ready, but we are not—at least, not yet.”
Robert Cannon, Internet law and policy expert, said: “Everything that can be automated will be automated. Non-skilled jobs lacking in ‘human contribution’ will be replaced by automation when the economics are favorable. At the hardware store, the guy who used to cut keys has been replaced by a robot. In the law office, the clerks who used to prepare discovery have been replaced by software. IBM Watson is replacing researchers by reading every report ever written anywhere.
“This begs the question: What can the human contribute? The short answer is that if the job is one where that question cannot be answered positively, that job is not likely to exist.”
Bryan Alexander, technology consultant, futurist, and senior fellow at the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education, said: “The education system is not well positioned to transform itself to help shape graduates who can ‘race against the machines.’ Not in time, and not at scale. Autodidacts will do well, as they always have done, but the broad masses of people are being prepared for the wrong economy.”
Hal Varian, chief economist for Google, said: “If ‘displace more jobs’ means ‘eliminate dull, repetitive, and unpleasant work,’ the answer would be yes. How unhappy are you that your dishwasher has replaced washing dishes by hand, your washing machine has displaced washing clothes by hand, or your vacuum cleaner has replaced hand cleaning?
“My guess is this ‘job displacement’ has been very welcome, as will the ‘job displacement’ that will occur over the next 10 years. The work week has fallen from 70 hours a week to about 37 hours now, and I expect that it will continue to fall. This is a good thing.”
Reasons to be hopeful
- Advances in technology may displace certain types of work, but historically they have been a net creator of jobs;
- We will adapt to these changes by inventing entirely new types of work, and by taking advantage of uniquely human capabilities;
- Technology will free us from day-to-day drudgery, and allow us to define our relationship with “work” in a more positive and socially beneficial way;
- Ultimately, we as a society control our own destiny through the choices we make.
Reasons for concern
- Impacts from automation have thus far impacted mostly blue-collar employment; the coming wave of innovation threatens to upend white-collar work as well;
- Certain highly-skilled workers will succeed wildly in this new environment—but far more may be displaced into lower paying service industry jobs at best, or permanent unemployment at worst;
- Our educational system is not adequately preparing us for work of the future, and our political and economic institutions are poorly equipped to handle these hard choices.
More on AI
Killer robots are coming, take action now
Loading ...