Robots Do It Better and Automation Could Eliminate 99% of U.S. Jobs
Until recently, many have feared job losses resulting from an influx of immigrants. That argument says that migrants would be willing to work for less money. Yet, apart from economic studies to the contrary, Americans should worry more about robots taking jobs. Yes, the biggest threat to U.S. jobs comes from automation.
Automation is coming faster than anybody could have predicted. Indeed, nobody could have expected the wave of robots taking over jobs. Consider that robots, or automation, has eliminated just one job in the past 60 years. Consider that, according to a Harvard University study, only lift operators have been completely replaced in the U.S. by automation. (Source: “Over the last 60 years, automation has totally eliminated just one US occupation,” Quartz, March 15, 2017.)
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But in the future only teachers, managers, lawyers, consulting professionals and medical experts staff might be spared from the proverbial axe. Thus, while at first glance, it might have looked like humans had a chance, fully automated jobs are coming.
While, it’s easy to understand if some humans might use the proverbial axe to smash them to smithereens, there’s little to stop the onslaught of robots. The real unemployment rate will explode.
Even actors have to start worrying. We already have a robotized form of wrestling. Radio-controlled robots, called “fighting bots” have their own TV shows and leagues already. Future technology could easily adapt that concept to the Hollywood star system. In the 2013 movie Her, Joaquin Phoenix gives a credible performance of a man falling in love with a software program.
The prospect of a world ruled by bots is materializing before our eyes. Such a world raises many questions about where society is going. Automation and robots—and who knows, even half-bot/half-human hybrids as in Robocop—will force us to reconsider the ethical, social, and economic foundations of life.
The next industrial revolution will create the biggest shift in human life since the advent of fire or the wheel. Jobs will be merely one of the first things to change. In fact, they may serve as the channel through which the droid revolution occurs. It may have taken 60 years to fully automate one profession, but the rate of robotic evolution will expand exponentially.
In the next 60 years, by 2080, humans may not have any jobs left to do. Perhaps we may still choose to be led by humans as presidents and senators. Then again, they might be replaced by a more honest and incorruptible version of us. They will actually do what they promise. Many Americans might welcome that.
Humans May Have Nothing to Do
But the path towards that favorable prospect will be filled with hardship and uncertainty. We humans will have to re-invent ourselves. For many, work is the very purpose of their lives. What is to become of the many who have been taught that hard work is the pillar of a good society? One thing seems clear, psychiatry and psychology will be top professions for humans in the near future.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) has taken the Harvard University study cited above seriously. The McKinsey Institute has published a similar study, reaching similar conclusions. (Source: “Where machines could replace humans—and where they can’t (yet),” McKinsey Quarterly, July 2016.)
The study has examined 270 specific occupations since the 1950s. The results are fascinating. While dropping demand has eliminated many jobs (such as small lodge operators), technology explains just about all the changes.
It was the evolution of technology that forced the retirement of equipment such as the telegraph. Humans were still required to operate its replacements, just fewer of them. Also, until recently automation actually created more work. Some jobs were only partially replaced by machines. In some sectors, employment has increased rather than decreased, giving the us the U.S. unemployment forecast 2017.
The Harvard study cited the case of textile factories during the Industrial Revolution making pants or socks. Thanks to textile machinery, the cost of the socks collapsed (as they were no longer handmade) and companies confronted the growing demand by hiring more staff. Why stop there? The automobile is an even greater example.
The car and Henry Ford may have eliminated jobs related to maintaining horses. But, by offering the “Model T” at such a relatively affordable price, Mr. Ford fueled demand for cars. Thus, he needed to employ thousands of workers, far outnumbering the ones who lost jobs. Competitors took up Ford’s challenge, boosting demand and brutally cutting the current employment rate.
Automation Has Made America Great
Then came the mechanics, the roadside gas station attendants, the motel operators, road builders, tire manufacturers, and so on. In this sense, it would be fair to say that automation has driven U.S. economic growth. In fact, it was technology and automation that attracted so many people from all over the world to come to America.
Automation has been the engine of the American Dream itself. There’s no doubt, automation, computers and software included, have fueled growth. They have increased the number of ways humans find regular work, earn regular income, and establish a stable base from where to build lives and families.
No wonder work has set such a deep imprint in the American psyche. Denial might give humans a few more years in such things as jobs. But, they are scheduled to be buried among a host of items from our archaeological past.
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has thundered “automation isn’t about to displace American workers,” but he too knows the end of human work is coming. (Source: “Actually, Steve Mnuchin, Robots Have Already Affected the U.S. Labor Market,” MIT Technology Review, March 28, 2017.)
But, not all automation comes with good intentions. The world still shows deep rifts in economic power. The poor have started to leave areas of the world with stagnant economies and societies in search of opportunities to build lives—willing to work for cents on the dollar. Meanwhile, other countries like China, transforming themselves after decades of failed socio-economic experiments, have decided to grow by doing work cheaper than in America.
The sum game of automation and cheap labor is that businesses will exploit it. Thus, while factory jobs could be a social vehicle to the middle class in the U.S. after the Great Depression, they have long gone astray from that route.
Dropping the price of goods does not necessarily create more U.S. jobs. Yet, it has pushed for more investment on automation to reduce costs and defend market shares. That has been especially the case since the 1990s, when financial deregulation crowned the financial market as the king of U.S. economic growth.
It is in the early 1990s that Wall Street sidelined Main Street as the chief motor of U.S. GDP. Apart from literally putting the whole American—if not global—economy at greater risk. It also meant that a company CEO’s main duty shifted from customers and workers to shareholders. The main goal for any company now is to boost its stock price at any human cost.
Thus, we have the phenomenon of banks making profits, yet shedding staff to become more efficient and competitive. CEOs cutting jobs makes the shares go higher. This is the phenomenon that has caused the immense social turmoil since the Lehman Brothers collapse of 2007, fueling the Great Recession.
The phenomenon has only gotten more intense. It is driving the new robot revolution because it feeds on efficiency and cheap labor. That means more and more workers will be replaced by cheaper workers first—immigrants—and by moving jobs to developing countries. Inevitably, as soon as the technology matures, robots and machines will take over.
Thus, there is a perfectly logical market argument as to how the proportion of jobs performed by humans will go to machines in the coming years. This is true for all manner of business segment. For example, as the McKinsey’s report cited above observes, 73% of hotel and restaurant services will be automated. That has already started to happen in such chains as McDonald’s and the like.
Then there are all those workers in the manufacturing, agricultural, transport, and construction sectors. Those of you who earn your living from brains rather brawn have nothing to smirk at. The robots are coming for your jobs as well. Workers in so-called “intellectual” activities from art, to law, entertainment, financial services, and journalism can also expect to give up their swiveling multi-function chairs to a robot.
Some jobs are at less, or perhaps slower, risk of facing redundancy. These, according to the studies, might be teachers followed by managers, consultants, medical and health personnel. In other words, humans performing tasks needing the most intuition, creativity, and knowledge will keep their jobs longest. But, once robots get involved in designing successive generations of robots, there’s going to be less and less need for intuition and frankly, human teaching, anyway.
It’s inevitable: after the factory worker, robots will deliver a more accurate diagnosis for your ailment. They will also prescribe the medicine or perform the surgery to make you feel better. While Trump continues to play the tune of increasing U.S. jobs by “encouraging” American companies to hire more domestic workers, planners are getting ready to build new automated factories. They will need a fraction of current staff levels.
Nobody would refuse the kin of progress that allows humans to enjoy their lives. The release from mundane tasks and obligations can release us from fatigue. It’s an opportunity. But the kind of automation that is arriving risks going out of control. The fact that cheaper labor costs have such a powerful effect on stock prices means automation will be one of the main ways companies will use to get that share bump.
Meanwhile, there are no easy solutions. We cannot legislate our way out of the problem. The pace of progress in artificial intelligence will accelerate the rise of automation. Uber apps, making it easier to hail a cab, have already caused riots in a world that has started to threaten cab drivers.
Soon Uber and others will have driverless cars. The rioters won’t even have people to riot against. Automation is the revolution that will terminate the very need for humans at all by the end of this century—let alone eliminate jobs.
