--- title: "What To Do When Robots Take Our Jobs" date: 2016-06-16 author: "Richard MacManus" featured_image: "https://ricmac.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/robotoffice-1.jpg" categories: - name: "Notes" url: "/category/notes.md" tags: - name: "Augintel" url: "/tag/augintel.md" --- # What To Do When Robots Take Our Jobs Automation. It’s a scary word to many of us, because it implies a threat to our livelihoods. Perhaps eventually our lives, if the rise of the robots turns into the *uprise* of the robots. In this edition of the newsletter, I discuss two major types of automation: **workplace automation** and **driverless cars**. Both of these trends are early-stage, but longer term they will significantly change how society functions. If your job is routine and predictable, sooner or later it will be automated (and this applies to both blue collar *and* white collar jobs). As for driverless cars, multi-billion dollar corporations like Google and Tesla are well on the way to making them a reality. The question I’ll address in this newsletter isn’t *what* will happen. Because that’s obvious: more and more of our lives will be automated. I’m more interested in *how* it will impact us. How much automation will we, as a society, be comfortable with? As you’ll see, I think the answer is very different depending on what’s being automated. Driverless cars, you’ll embrace. But your job being automated? Not so much. ## Driverless Cars A [driverless car](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car) is exactly what it sounds like: “a vehicle that is capable of sensing its environment and navigating without human input.” A raft of car manufacturers and tech companies [predict](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/02/self-driving-car-elon-musk-tech-predictions-tesla-google) that driverless cars will be commonplace by as soon as 2020, just four years away. So they’re coming, perhaps sooner than you think. [Google’s self-driving car project](http://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/) has been the most high profile in the 2010s. It started in 2009 and has since logged over 1.6 million miles of testing. Every month Google releases a [progress report](http://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/reports/), which usually tout the benefits of driverless cars. Its [May 2016 report](http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//selfdrivingcar/files/reports/report-0516.pdf) focuses on the human propensity for distraction (conveniently overlooking how much of that is caused by humans with Android smartphones). The report notes/gloats that “our self-driving cars are designed to see 360 degrees and not be distracted, unlike human drivers, who are not always fully aware of their surroundings.” It’s undeniable that driverless cars will decrease the number of car accidents, probably by a significant margin. That’s reason number one why society will eventually welcome this type of automation. But what’s most likely to accelerate uptake is that driverless cars will, in time, become much more *convenient* for people. Most of us use cars because we have to. We need to get from A to B, multiple times a day. But unless you’re a Top Gear fan, you probably aren’t a car enthusiast. So if all you had to do to get from A to B was step outside and jump into a driverless car (in terms of availability of cars, think Uber x 100), many of us would do that. Especially if it’s free! Because online advertising is far from a spent force: millions of us will choose to be exposed to ads in the back seat, in exchange for free rides. That’s partly why Google is so keen on driverless cars. For these reasons, I’m certain that most of us will become comfortable with driverless cars as the norm on our roads. Statistically they will cause far fewer accidents, plus they’ll be cheaper and more convenient. ## Workplace Automation Automating our jobs is a different matter. It’s already begun to happen too, as Artificial Intelligence becomes more and more able to do the routine, non-creative work that we humans are accustomed to doing. It’s not just robots taking over manufacturing jobs either. White collar work, such as legal jobs, are just as much at risk. Martin Ford, author of a best selling book called [The Rise of the Robots](), told Nora Young from [CBS Radio’s Spark show](http://www.cbc.ca/radio/spark/the-automated-workforce-with-martin-ford-1.1524946) that legal discovery work by lawyers will soon be automated. According to Ford, we’ll all need to transition to non-routine, creative work to avoid having our jobs automated. The big, looming issue is that there won’t be enough non-routine, creative jobs. So workplace automation will fundamentally change the world economy, because it will significantly increase unemployment and decrease real wages. The one percent who own the machines will do very well, but a huge slice of the working population will suffer. So what’s the solution? Ford suggests that governments need to step in. He told CBS Radio that the US government should move towards a guaranteed minimum income. In America, this is known as a “universal basic income.” Ford also wants to preserve incentives for people to do more with their lives – for example, pay people a little more to study or do nonprofit work. The problem is, universal basic income is an idea so distasteful to Americans that even liberal media such as The New York Times [refuse to entertain](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/01/business/economy/universal-basic-income-poverty.html) it. On [a recent Andreessen Horowitz podcast](http://a16z.com/2016/05/23/augmentation-vs-automation-jobs/), Sonal Chokshi interviewed Thomas Davenport and Julia Kirby, the authors of a book entitled *Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines*. The pair were openly disdainful of universal basic income, suggesting that everyone needs to work. Even a dog wants to work, said Davenport. The authors also insisted that workplace automation *won’t* result in mass unemployment, which seems like an awfully blinkered view (not to mention easy to say from an ivory tower). Economics professor Jeffrey Sachs has a much more realistic view. He’s published [a draft paper](http://jeffsachs.org/2016/06/the-best-of-times-the-worst-of-times-macroeconomics-of-robots/) about the “macroeconomics of robots” and his [conclusion](http://jeffsachs.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/The-Best-of-Times-the-Worst-of-Times.pdf) is that “the robot revolution is likely to raise capital income, lower labor income, and redistribute earnings from the young to the old.” In other words, the owners of the robots will get most of the income, while labor income will go down accordingly. One solution, he suggests, is “a reverse social-security scheme in which wealth holders are taxed in order to pay for transfers \[of wealth\] to young workers.” So, a universal basic income. It’s hard to see how the US government can avoid it, as workplace automation takes hold over the coming years. Lest I be called a Communist for saying that, I also agree with Martin Ford that incentives are needed to encourage people to upskill or do nonprofit work. One silver lining is that automation will inevitably create new types of jobs for we humans. Just as jobs such as Social Media Manager or Genetics Counsellor did not exist a decade ago, there will be hundreds of new careers created as the automation age takes hold. Many of them will require humanistic skills – creativity, relationship building, intuition, and so on. In [a BBC article](http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150805-will-machines-eventually-take-on-every-job) last August, Alison Sander from the Boston Consulting Group listed the following as possible future jobs: biobankers, augmented reality authors, anti-ageing specialists, urban farmers, anxiety counsellors, clutter consultants and pet psychologists. AR author sounds good to me! ## Conclusion Automation is happening already and some of it we’ll become comfortable with (driverless cars) and some of it will be profoundly discomforting (workplace automation). There are no easy answers to the latter, but I hope our governments take the threat of workplace automation seriously. US congress has at least begun to [discuss it](http://futurism.com/u-s-congress-discusses-ai-automation-robotics-and-basic-income/), which is encouraging. One thing is for sure. We humans need to work towards solutions *now*, because the robots aren’t going to do it for us. *Photo credit: [CloudPro](http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/cloud-essentials/public-cloud/3606/going-robotic-how-cloud-data-centres-will-get-slicker/page/0/1)*