Robot Workers: Coexistence Is Possible
Robots Create Jobs
Robot Workers: Coexistence Is Possible
Jobs
Robots
Illustration by Andrew Rae; Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis
by Sam Grobart | Bloomberg Business Week
The robots are coming. Resistance is futile. From car factories to microprocessor plants to fulfillment warehouses, a single robot can now handle tasks that once took hundreds of man-hours to complete. This relentless march of automation is causing economic upheaval. As time goes on, companies will become more productive and more efficient, but the amount of human labor required will decrease and the pay will be less. The sentient worker will be reduced to a relic of a simpler age.
This is what we’ve been told, anyway. To some economists, stubbornly high unemployment rates in the U.S. and Europe are at least partly attributable to the rise of machines. “There’s no question that in some high-profile industries, technology is displacing workers of all, or almost all, kinds,” wrote Paul Krugman in the New York Times on Dec. 9, adding that “many of the jobs being displaced are high-skill and high-wage.” Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Erik Brynjolfsson, co-author of Race Against the Machine, says: “Robots are becoming more capable and skilled, and people with the same sets of skills are not as much in demand.” According to this view, robots aren’t change agents. They’re destroyers of worlds.
Yet the robot revolution doesn’t have to cause panic. While robots can claim some technological superiority over humans, even the most sophisticated machines have limitations. Automation will inevitably displace jobs, but it’s already bringing fresh economic opportunities as well. The last two decades have shown how technology can create industries even as it turns whole cities into has-beens. The ratio of jobs created to jobs eliminated by robots and where all the new-found wealth ultimately winds up are entirely dependent on how workers, businesses, and policymakers prepare for this new era.
History is punctuated with scares about automation, with industries rising and falling based on changing technologies. Toward the end of the 18th century, 90 percent of the U.S. population was involved in farming. Farmers now make up 2 percent of the domestic workforce because of innovations such as tractors and grain combines. Meanwhile, our modern economy includes people who make a living creating mobile apps, a profession that was inconceivable a generation ago.
More than any economy in the world, the U.S. has proven to be especially resilient in the face of massive technological change. Why should recent advances in robotics be any different?
One reason is the accelerating pace of change. “We have a growing mismatch between the speed of technological development and our ability to adapt to it,” says Brynjolfsson. Technological developments used to take time to work their way into society. The internal-combustion engine was developed in the latter half of the 19th century, but it displaced the horse as a means of transportation only some 50 years later. The World Wide Web, on the other hand, has upended industries in less than 20 years. Moore’s Law is faster than Otto’s cycle.
Grobart is a senior writer for Bloomberg Businessweek. Follow him on Twitter @samgrobart.