Robots Are More Employable Than Humans

Robots Are More Employable Than Humans

As machines get more skilled, they also become more employable at the expense of humans. It starts with autonomous vehicles replacing taxi and lorry drivers. Jobs in hospitality, accounting and in the legal profession could also be at risk.
Research predicts that up to 38% of US jobs could be replaced by robots. Others argue that just as the first Industrial Revolution destroyed jobs in manual labour, we could be replaced by robots in the robot revolution. There will be robots to meet human needs and new jobs created that none of us can predict in advance, the revolution its self will create jobs, but will the robots build the robots or will we?

Improving human life by making the daily grind easier, surely that is the goal? This robot chef from a London based company will go on sale in 2017. It will automatically prepare more than 2000 meals at the touch of a smart-phone. On the menu today, crab bisque with a garnish of tarragon and some olive oil. I just want to know who does the shopping? The answer to that is not a human or a robot, have already covered all that, this is where the internet of things comes in, the fridge will order the shopping for you!

Already there are people working in industries that nobody envisaged 20-30 years ago. The more we can train people so they can get into the high collar jobs, the better. I am not a pessimist and I do not think we will all end up unemployed. I think we will be doing different things and quite possibly more rewarding work. Here we will just keep coding and working on our websites...WAIT! ...maybe we are in trouble.. can a robot code?

There is no guarantee that this second industrial revolution will follow the same rules. Technology and progress are the only free lunch as it is these things that keep making the pie bigger, technology is making us, in aggregate, a great deal wealthier.

Who Will Work

The challenge is that there is no economic law that says, work will be divided up in a fair way or divided up the same way that it was five or ten years ago. Maybe the entire robot revolution makes the very concept of the job rather old-fashioned. What is so big and important about having a job? The entire way that the system works is that you have to have a job to get money, to buy food. We will have to change that, we will have to break out of that. Is it best if you don't have a job if you do not enjoy it? Enjoy yourself, do something you love, could this be where the robot revolution will lead us? Let the technology do the hard work and follow your bliss, have you heard that one?

Robotic systems are being used more and more in warfare. The United States is pushing the technology very hard, with the global leader being Boston Dynamics (A Google Owned Company). What they want to do is to try and get the military advantage by having these autonomous weapons. That is robotic weapons that can go out, select their own target, and kill that target without human involvement. Think about that, a machine that can kill autonomously, what happens when it goes wrong or if they get re-programmed? What happens when everybody has them? Is it really right to delegate the decision to kill a human to a machine? There is a very strong moral argument against that. If the near-term arguments are complicated, then the long-term is totally bewildering.

The robot revolution is happening right now and it is in its early days. The advances that have arrived so far are not the crowning achievements of the second machine age, but are the warm up acts with the interesting stuff is yet to come. Robots are like smart-phones loaded up full of apps, very clever but not adaptable. Robots are going to become a bigger part of our lives and they will keep getting more intelligent. One day they might be as smart as us and they could be even smarter but they might not be always be as friendly as they are today.

One goal is to build artificial intelligence much more like the human mind. Machine super intelligence, sometimes called "the singularity", might be in a strong position to shape the future. One day the rights of robots will be something as important as the rights of Homo sapiens. When I think about the long-term prospects for humanity and life on this planet, machine shaped intelligence does seem to be one of the most important things.

Evangelists Believe

Evangelists believe that super intelligent, benevolent machines will ease poverty at a stroke and will allow us to live forever by coming up with innovations that we cannot think of. Others warn that it could be the last invention of humanity. 

Digital disruption will wipe out 40% of Fortune 500 firms in next 10 years, say c-suite execs

Super intelligence is not a long way off being feasible. This robotic future is happening right now. What do you think?

Article Updated May 12th 2022