Can
a Robot Do Your Job?
By
David Floyd | January 20, 2016
That
guy from the Black Eyed Peas, a robot, and the prime minister of Canada
The
answer, as it turns out, is the "fourth industrial revolution."
Chances
are that Justin Trudeau, will.i.am and Hubo the South Korean robot don't have
to worry about their jobs being automated away any time soon. World leaders and
pop artists have a certain human flair that cannot be encapsulated in an
algorithm quite yet, and Hubo the robot is on the offensive.
Technology
Will Make You Redundant
Doctors,
lawyers and journalists – not to mention cashiers – are back on their heels,
however. And that is what the assembled rich and powerful personages at the
World Economic Forum's annual Davos meet-up are discussing.
The
first industrial revolution was steam-powered. Work that had been done by
domesticated animals or human brawn was transferred to water-powered mills and
coal-fired steam engines, accelerating the pace of manufacturing and commerce.
This led to overall economic growth, but the millers, weavers, blacksmiths and
periauger pilots who lost their jobs were anything but thrilled.
Meanwhile
the handful with the luck and foresight to take advantage of change – the
Cornelius Vanderbilts – became the wealthiest people since Crassus. The pattern
repeated itself a century later with the advent of electricity and the assembly
line manufacturing techniques pioneered by Ford Motor Co. (F). It happened
again a century after that, with the adoption of computers and robotics.
Now
we're on round four. The machines have come a long way from Samuel Crompton's
"spinning mule." Now they can think, more or less, meaning that it's
not just those who do physical labor who risk losing their livelihood.
International Business Machines Corp.'s (IBM ) Watson, a computer endowed
with what currently counts as "artificial intelligence," will
definitely beat you at Jeopardy.
For
now that might be a party trick, but the implications of a computer that can
handle natural language and learn from its mistakes should trouble many in
once-safe professions. The very toughest medical, research and legal problems
will require humans for a while yet, but the more routine parts of these fields
like drawing up a contract, diagnosing a common ailment, or (God forbid)
writing this article could soon be done by a relatively cheap, uncomplaining
algorithm.
The
Peripherals
Other
developments feed into the advent of artificial intelligence, particularly
smart phones. Of course, comparatively, they're not actually smart at all. They
don't think, but they do put incredible computing power in the palm of just
about everybody's hand. This in turn makes the sharing economy possible. Taxi
drivers are already sweating in the face of Uber, but add "deep
learning" to the equation, and you begin to render all drivers obsolete,
not just taxi drivers.
Alphabet
Inc. (GOOG) and Apple Inc. (AAPL ) have been working on
self-driving cars for a while, and are now being joined – perhaps too late – by
just about every major automaker.
The
feedback loop of innovation doesn't stop there, though. Given how much time the
average car spends sitting idle in a garage, there's still much more room for
the mobile and sharing economy's role to grow. Using a smartphone, you could
summon a nearby self-driving car that's not being used, meaning cars spend much
more time on the road, so we need far fewer of them.
Perhaps
individuals would continue to own cars, or perhaps businesses would take over.
Either way, a lot of cars themselves will become redundant, just like horses a
century before.
Where
to Now?
Considering
the implications of this shift, you begin to see how millions and millions of
jobs could simply evaporate. You can't work on the assembly line building the
car, you can't drive the car, you can't even sit on the board of the
carmaker—so many of them are out of business (not to mention that half of the
execs at Davos think a machine will sit on a corporate board by 2026).
Perhaps
you can code the apps that summon the cars and the software that drives them, but
then again, machines may do much of that too, soon enough. The same pattern
repeats itself across several industries, and soon we're left with a
hollowed-out middle class and a couple dozen Silicon Valley gazillionaires.
So,
Davos crew, since you're thinking so much about this, what do we do? As in
previous industrial revolutions, the eventual result will probably be a larger,
stronger economy with more wealth and higher standards of living for all.
But
to avoid falling victim to rising inequality in the near-term, the World
Economic Forum advises you learn these 10 skills by 2020: complex problem
solving, critical thinking, creativity, people management, coordinating with
others, emotional intelligence, judgment and decision making, service orientation,
negotiation and cognitive flexibility. Perhaps I lack cognitive flexibility,
but those sound like soupy abstractions, not skills.
Then
again, one man has figured out how to apply all of these skills quite
effectively.
Jon
Kabat-Zinn, a mindfulness meditation expert, is at Davos right now helping the
world's business elite to keep a handle on things by "cultivating intimacy
with their moment-by-moment bodily experience." Creative.
Service-orientated. Emotionally intelligent. Definitely falls under people
management. Seems like it's all there.
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