What if I told you Skynet from the Terminator is a distinct possibility. In the next ten years we will likely see many jobs being taken over by robotics and Artificial Intelligence (AI). This a dilemma we are now facing in the modern age, the question of how we will handle the upcoming wave of automating of most jobs. Robots will soon be handling a plethora of jobs such as fast food service, banking, writing legal documents, and even driving cars for us. This raises the specter that in the future some 45% of job positions will be obsolete. Research also shows that this time it is different in the sense that once these jobs go away there will not be very many new jobs to replace the low skilled workers that were lost in this robot revolution. The gigantic question is what to do with these people who will be nearly useless to the work-force after the automation is completed.
Innovation is usually hailed as a great savior, but what if innovation soon becomes a destroyer? In the upcoming years Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotics will become much more mainstream. Previously, only blue collar type jobs were being effected by the automation we are seeing through this new technology. But now AI and Robots are going to begin to start creeping into white collar jobs. A quote by author Bruce Kasanoff of Forbes magazine sums up this coming replacement of humans in the workforce quite well, “From writers (gasp!) to programmers, physicians to researchers, profession after profession will be whittled away by machines that a.) Learn on their own, and b.) Are cheaper to operate than you are.”
We as a society are on the cusp of a major breakthrough in terms of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. For the first time ever, a super computer has beat the Turing Test. As stated by Andrew Griffin of the newspaper The Independent, “A program that convinced humans that it was a 13-year-old boy has become the first computer ever to pass the Turing Test. The test — which requires that computers are indistinguishable from humans — is considered a landmark in the development of artificial intelligence.” There are already robots with the abilities to learn how to do simple low skilled tasks by just observing humans carrying out the tasks (Rethink Robotics).
In today’s global economy the most important aspect is to maximize profit and minimize risks. So it makes sense for businesses and companies to get rid of a huge hinderance to doing those two things, human beings. AI and Robots do not call in sick, they do not show up drunk, they never play office politics, and most importantly you only pay for them once and maybe some lite maintenance. The benefits for companies to start implementing this technology are too gigantic to not happen.
A major point people like to bring up when discussing the rise of AI and Robots is that there are some human professions that can never be replaced by a machine. These professions are things such as a composer, writer, lawyer, bank teller, financial advisor, doctor and surgeon. All of these jobs are slowly being automated or robotized. Computer programs can now write legal code, ATMs have replaced many bank tellers. Wealth management is mostly done on computers as well. It will not be long before a computer can invest in the stock market at more intelligent levels than a human. There is now something called the da-Vinci Surgery Bot which will assist a surgeon during surgery. “With the da Vinci Surgical System, surgeons operate through just a few small incisions. The da Vinci System features a magnified 3D high-definition vision system and tiny wristed instruments that bend and rotate far greater than the human wrist (davincisurgery.com).” Recently, IBM unveiled their Artificial Intelligence computing system named Watson. Watson was featured on the show Jeopardy destroying his human opponents. He is also helping physicians diagnose illnesses in patients. From here it is not a long shot until most of the above jobs are almost totally automated. Because in the end the highest paying professions are the ones in which there is the most incentive to automate or robotize.
New technologies replacing the old is not anything new to humanity. Some examples of this replacement in the past is the decline of the horse. In 1915 the horse population peaked worldwide and has gone down ever since due to the invention of the automobile. Horses were simply not needed as much any longer. Another example is the automation of farming, in the year 1800 a very significant majority of the human population was needed to produce enough food to survive. Slowly overtime technologies like the combine, fertilizer, and irrigation lead to a massive decrease in the number of people working in farming. Today, one man in a tractor can do in a day what previously took a month with 12 people working by hand.
A galactic sized counter argument to the ideas postulated above is that simply if a large number of people lose their jobs or have their wages slashed then no one will have enough money to even buy the products or use the services that Al and Robots create. For this futuristic reality to become real, people have to keep consuming and pursuing material items at the average rates they are today. If there is another downturn or some sort of economic malaise then overall across the board innovation will slow as well.
It is extremely likely that within another decade or so the question of automation of jobs will enter the national dialogue. We will indefinably see some form of these new technologies, whether it is to the extent that somewhere around 45% of people lose their jobs is yet to be seen.
Roaming Renegade 