A study from PWC show that by the early 2030s, 38% of US jobs are at a high risk of automation, more than in Germany, the UK, and Japan.
In “This is the most dangerous time for our planet”, Stephen Hawking writes -
The automation of factories has already decimated jobs in traditional manufacturing, and the rise of artificial intelligence is likely to extend this job destruction deep into the middle classes, with only the most caring, creative or supervisory roles remaining.
Jobs Vulnerable to Extinction by Automation
From www.economist.com/… —
What determines vulnerability to automation, experts say, is not so much whether the work concerned is manual or white-collar but whether or not it is routine.
Barack Obama, Neural Nets, Self-driving Cars and the Future of the World
Then I found this fascinating interview with Obama, from last year — “Barack Obama, Neural Nets, Self-driving Cars and the Future of the World” at www.wired.com/…
There is not much one can add to what President Obama said in that interview. Obama’s depth and breadth of technology, security, and policy issues, and his clarity in thinking and explaining them is mind-boggling. I am sure you will enjoy reading every word of this interview.
A few excerpts -
In science fiction, what you hear about is generalized AI, right? Computers start getting smarter than we are and eventually conclude that we’re not all that useful, and then either they’re drugging us to keep us fat and happy or we’re in the Matrix. My impression, based on talking to my top science advisers, is that we’re still a reasonably long way away from that.
.. specialized AI, which is about using algorithms and computers to figure out increasingly complex tasks. We’ve been seeing specialized AI in every aspect of our lives, from medicine and transportation to how electricity is distributed, and it promises to create a vastly more productive and efficient economy. If properly harnessed, it can generate enormous prosperity and opportunity. But it also has some downsides that we’re gonna have to figure out in terms of not eliminating jobs. It could increase inequality. It could suppress wages.
The way I’ve been thinking about the regulatory structure as AI emerges is that, early in a technology, a thousand flowers should bloom. And the government should add a relatively light touch, investing heavily in research and making sure there’s a conversation between basic research and applied research. As technologies emerge and mature, then figuring out how they get incorporated into existing regulatory structures becomes a tougher problem, and the government needs to be involved a little bit more.
Low-wage, low-skill individuals become more and more redundant, and their jobs may not be replaced, but wages are suppressed. And if we are going to successfully manage this transition, we are going to have to have a societal conversation about how we manage this. How are we training and ensuring the economy is inclusive if, in fact, we are producing more than ever, but more and more of it is going to a small group at the top? How do we make sure that folks have a living income?
You’re exactly right, and that’s what I mean by redesigning the social compact. Now, whether a universal income is the right model—is it gonna be accepted by a broad base of people?—that’s a debate that we’ll be having over the next 10 or 20 years. You’re also right that the jobs that are going be displaced by AI are not just low-skill service jobs; they might be high-skill jobs but ones that are repeatable and that computers can do.
Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and the Economy
The Obama administration released this report last December — Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and the Economy — obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/… — which “examines the expected impact of AI-driven automation on the economy, and describes broad strategies that could increase the benefits of AI and mitigate its costs”.
It’s broad recommendations include —
- Invest in and develop AI for its many benefits;
- Educate and train Americans for jobs of the future; and
- Aid workers in the transition and empower workers to ensure broadly shared growth.
Most of the recommendations, as well as further work in this area, will probably go into cold storage with the current administration.
Few Examples of AI and Automation
The field of AI, automation, robotics and machine-learning has accelerated over the past few years. These technologies have been around since the birth of computers, but recent advances has brought forth companies with deep pockets and simple applications that are amenable to AI techniques, that have become pervasive.
AI, big data analysis and learning algorithms are part of our everyday lives, more than we realize.
- Facebook uses AI for targeted advertising, photo tagging, and curated news feeds.
- Microsoft and Apple use AI to power their digital assistants, Cortana and Siri.
- Google’s search engine from the beginning has been dependent on AI.
- Fanuc, maker of the industrial robots used to assemble iPhones for Apple and cars for Volkswagen and Tesla, is now adding artificial intelligence and machine learning to its robots.
- Self-driving cars, with technology development and investment by most car manufacturers, Google, Tesla, Apple and Intel.
- Google’s DeepMind, IBM’s TrueNorth (neural chip) and many more projects listed at en.wikipedia.org/… are examples of recent progress and examples of what’s in the pipeline.
Here are some videos of robots in action in factories around the world today -
Here is a robot with human-like mechanical skills, one of many developed by Boston Dynamics. You can imagine its potential uses from factories to warehouses to future warfare.
Here is another field being explored by AI — music composition.
Check out www.aiva.ai/… for classical music composed by AI. Click on Album and select a track.
AI based music may not displace maestro composers anytime soon, but it may very well get used to generate music for commercials, amateur videos and background music.
Solutions
en.wikipedia.org/… describes the following categories of solutions that have been proposed and experimented with —
- Banning/refusing innovation
- Welfare payments
- Basic income
- Education
- Public works
- Shorter working hours
- Broadening the ownership of technological assets
- Structural changes towards a post-scarcity economy
- Merge the human brain with software and AI — (Elon Musk www.theverge.com/…)
Universal Basic Income
A basic income is a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means-test or work requirement. (From basicincome.org/...)
From the article “A Plan in Case Robots Take the Jobs: Give Everyone a Paycheck” at www.nytimes.com/…
How will society function after humanity has been made redundant? Technologists and economists have been grappling with this fear for decades, but in the last few years, one idea has gained widespread interest — including from some of the very technologists who are now building the bot-ruled future.
Their plan is known as “universal basic income,” or U.B.I., and it goes like this: As the jobs dry up because of the spread of artificial intelligence, why not just give everyone a paycheck?
“I think it’s a bad use of a human to spend 20 years of their life driving a truck back and forth across the United States,” Mr. Wenger said. “That’s not what we aspire to do as humans — it’s a bad use of a human brain — and automation and basic income is a development that will free us to do lots of incredible things that are more aligned with what it means to be human.”
Elon Musk at the World Government Summit in Dubai -
I think we'll end up doing universal basic income. It's going to be necessary.
UBI Pilots
A few pilots are listed in en.wikipedia.org/...
The most recent highly visible one is that in Finland, a scheme that will provide citizens with a basic income, regardless of employment, launched in Jan 2017. www.kela.fi/...
The two-year pilot scheme will provide 2,000 unemployed Finnish citizens, aged between 25 and 58, with a monthly basic income of 560 euros unconditionally and without means testing. The experiment will also assess whether there are differences in employment rates between those receiving and those not receiving a basic income.
Remarks
We have tough challenges ahead in so many areas, but our government has been hijacked by some of the most science-illiterate and incompetent people on the planet. Instead of understanding the changes that have been wrought by technology and planning for the even more drastic changes on the horizon, they are busy deceiving the American workforce into thinking that the future of the workplace lies with good old-fashioned manufacturing, mining and trucking jobs.
What do you think? What will the future bring for the human workforce ? What jobs will be left for humans to perform? Will the workforce adapt to automation or will millions be left unemployed? Is UBI inevitable? What will society look like post-UBI?
References
- Obama interview (Nov 2016) — www.wired.com/…
- Obama just warned Congress about robots taking over jobs that pay less than $20 an hour (Mar 2016) — www.businessinsider.com/…
- Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and the Economy — obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/...
- Technological unemployment — en.wikipedia.org/...
- The Relentless Pace of Automation — www.technologyreview.com/…
- Will robots steal our jobs? The potential impact of automation on the UK and other major economies — www.pwc.co.uk/…
- The Future of Employment: How Susceptible are Jobs to Computerisation?, Frey and Osborne — www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/...
- Basic Income Earth Network — basicincome.org
- Universal Basic Income. The answer to Automation? — futurism.com/… (a wonderful infographic on UBI)
- Why don’t we have universal basic income? — www.newyorker.com/…
- The Future of not working — www.nytimes.com/…
- Experimental study on a universal basic income (in Finland) — www.kela.fi/...
- Music by AI — www.dailykos.com/…
- Self-driving cars will kill a lot of jobs. What then? www.dailykos.com/… — for some spirited discussions on a similar topic.
- Elon Musk’s Billion-dollar Crusade to Stop the A.I. Apocalypse — www.vanityfair.com/…
- Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari review — www.theguardian.com/… and www.vox.com/...