Fear of machines taking jobs dates back at least as far as the Luddites. Two centuries on, many of us could face the same predicament. In 2013 Carl Frey and Michael Osborne of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology at the University of Oxford looked at 702 types of work and ranked them according to how easy it would be to automate them. They found that just under half of all jobs in the US could feasibly be done by machines within two decades.
The list included jobs such as telemarketers and library technicians. Not far behind were less obviously susceptible jobs, including models, cooks and construction workers, threatened respectively by digital avatars, robochefs and prefabricated buildings made in robot factories. The least vulnerable included mental health workers, teachers of young children, clergy and choreographers. In general, jobs that fared better required strong social interaction, original thinking and creative ability, or very specific fine skills of the sort demonstrated by dentists and surgeons. The Pew Research Center, asked 1896 experts whether they thought that by 2025, technology would have destroyed more jobs than it creates. The optimists outnumbered the pessimists. But I was recently talking to a lawyer who expects the legal profession to be disrupted; ROSS, an AI assistant built on IBM’s Watson computer, is already undertaking legal research. At the least AI could will cause short-term turbulence in the labour market, as if it isn’t already being disrupted by other factors.
On the other hand, an OECD paper concluded that AI will not be able to do all the tasks that require human interaction – and only about 9 per cent of jobs are fully automatible. The successful robots will be designed to work alongside people, making their work safer and easier, not replacing them.
The fear is that the so-called gig economy will grow ever larger, with self-employed people taking casual jobs whenever and wherever they can find them. It’s really tough to have a family and a mortgage and to continue working like that, unless you are a total non- worrier. A recent study of 1 million people who bank with JP Morgan Chase suggested that the number of people getting some of their income from the gig economy has increased tenfold in two years. Under this system companies have no obligation to keep supplying work, to provide benefits like holiday pay or pensions, or to offer any loyalty or human compassion whatsoever.
The optimists think there will be inequities and disruptions, but that’s been going on for hundreds of years. The question is: is this trend the human-centred? Will it exascerbate the gap between rich and poor? I would add: what is the point of it all? Are you doing it simply because you can do it, or are you consciously aiming to make life on Earth better and more fulfilling? It’s all very well for scientists with secure, cushy jobs to tell us that all will be benign, but the real worlds of Brexit and Trump suggest deep disillusionment already. (provoked by an article by Jon White, New Scientist)
I think we have absolutely nothing to fear from the robot age. There will considerable leaps in worker productivity, our GDP, the number if high skilled jobs and even our health will improve as a result. Yes it will mean that some jobs will go, but there’s no evidence of an overall decline in employment. What’s more likely is that the nature of jobs will change, with fewer low skilled jobs and more high skilled jobs. The point of it all is to improve human lives, to make them healthier, wealthier and happier. That is why technology is Epicurean.